Browsing by Author "Kuosmanen, Isa"

School choice was introduced to the current comprehensive schooling system in Finland during the mid-1990s as a result of several small policy changes. Student sorting is still mainly based on proximity, but students are allowed to apply to another school. The ease of applying and being accepted into other than your assigned school varies between municipalities. Even though the proportion of students exercising choice is considerable, the effects of the Finnish reform are relatively understudied and the research is mostly conducted by educational scientists, leaving out the logic of economics through which school choice was originally justified. The purpose of this thesis is to study the effects of school choice on segregation of schools using joint application data of ninth graders ending comprehensive school and applying to secondary education in 1996 to 2004. Segregation of schools is measured over time at municipal level using municipalities with at least two schools. The very well-known Duncan index and variation between schools are used to measure segregation of schools. Also, isolation index is used to measure segregation of schools by foreign speaking students. Indices are adjusted to measure segregation from randomness. The development of these measures is studied more closely for the Capital City region. In addition, fixed effects model is used to explain the segregation indices by the share of students attending local school and residential segregation. Segregation increases steadily from 1996 to 2004 in Helsinki by high school attendance, high school graduation and GPA. Segregation is lower and stays almost constant for Vantaa, where school choice has been more limited from the beginning. All measures for segregation of schools by foreign students for Helsinki and Vantaa are somewhat inconclusive. Using municipality fixed effects model to explain segregation indices by schools’ share of local students and residential segregation indicates that in cities with high share of students attending their neighborhood school segregation of schools by high school attendance and graduation decreases. However, results are insignificant for the rest of the measures and it seems that residential segregation explains the segregation of schools for all measures. Fixed effect model may suffer from endogeneity. The results indicate increasing segregation of schools by ability in Helsinki after the reform and the fixed effect model to some extent supports these findings. Measures are still quite moderate. More data on before the reform is required to make any causal interpretations on the effects of the school choice reform. The evidence suggests that the underlying residential segregation plays a key role in segregation of schools. School choice is believed to alleviate the pressure of ‘selection by mortgage’. Therefore, the effects of the reform on residential segregation should be studied before we consider limiting school choice in Finland.