Causal Effects of Single-Sex Schools on College Entrance Exams and College Attendance: Random Assignment in Seoul High Schools

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PSC Working Paper Series
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Academic achievement
Attendance
Causal effects
Causal inferences
Causation
Coeducational schools
College attendance
College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT)
Consequences
Education
Equalization Policy
Female teachers
Four-year colleges
Gender
High school
Higher education
Korea
Korean government
Korean high schools
Learning
Male teachers
Outcomes
Public education
Public lottery
Random school assignment
Regression analysis
Same-gender teachers
Single-sex public education
Single-sex schools
Teachers
Two-year colleges
United States
Asian Studies
Curriculum and Instruction
Demography, Population, and Ecology
Education
Educational Administration and Supervision
Family, Life Course, and Society
Gender and Sexuality
Inequality and Stratification
International and Comparative Education
Other Education
Quantitative, Qualitative, Comparative, and Historical Methodologies
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Despite the voluminous literature on the potentials of single-sex schools, there is no consensus on the effects of single-sex schools because of student selection of school types. We exploit a unique feature of schooling in Seoul, the random assignment of students into single-sex versus coeducational high schools, to assess causal effects of single-sex schools on college entrance exam scores and college attendance. Our validation of the random assignment shows comparable socioeconomic backgrounds and prior academic achievement of students attending single-sex schools and coeducational schools, which increases the credibility of our causal estimates of single-sex school effects. Attending all-boys schools or all-girls schools rather than attending coeducational schools is significantly associated with higher average scores on Korean and English test scores. Single-sex schools have a higher percentage of graduates who attended four-year colleges and a lower percentage of graduates who attended two-year junior colleges than coeducational schools. The positive effects of single-sex schools remain substantial, even after taking into account various school-level variables such as teacher quality, the student-teacher ratio, the proportion of students receiving lunch support, and whether the schools are public or private.

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2012-01-25
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Park, Hyunjoon, Jere R. Behrman and Jaesung Choi. 2012. "Causal Effects of Single-Sex Schools on College Entrance Exams and College Attendance: Random Assignment in Seoul High Schools." PSC Working Paper Series, PSC 10-01.
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