Central City School Administrative Policy: Systematically Passing Undeserving Students

Abstract

The current paper reveals evidence consistent with social promotion in Ohio's central city public schools. Relative to rural school districts, there is something about central city schools that makes their students perform worse on the state proficiency test. However, this same something makes central city schools graduate students at a higher rate, holding a multitude of demographic and school input factors constant. There is also something about suburban school districts that make them have worse proficiency test scores than rural districts, all else constant, but whatever causes this also causes the suburban schools' students to drop out of school more than students from rural districts.

JEL Classification: D73, H40, I21