Mean and distributional impact of single-sex high schools on students' cognitive achievement, major choice, and test-taking behavior: Evidence from a random assignment policy in Seoul, Korea

Abstract

Single-sex schooling has been considered in many countries as a way to promote student achievement. This paper estimates the mean and distributional impact of single-sex high schools on students' cognitive achievement, major choice, and test-taking behavior by exploiting the random assignment policy adopted in Seoul, Korea. Based on administrative data for a period of seven years, I find that, on average, the positive effects of single-sex schooling on test scores are small, especially when the parental and teacher sorting are accounted for. Although the magnitude of the estimated effects is small, I find that the effect is relatively larger for students in quantiles 0.5-0.8 of the distribution of test scores. The impact is trivial, on the other hand, for students located at the very bottom and the very top quantiles. Moreover, I do not find any differences, both practically and statistically, in major choice and test-taking behavior. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.