Department of Sociology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA.
Demography. 2013 Apr;50(2):447-69. doi: 10.1007/s13524-012-0157-1.
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. The three-level hierarchical model shows that attending all-boys schools or all-girls schools, rather than coeducational schools, is significantly associated with higher average scores on Korean and English test scores. Applying the school district fixed-effects models, we find that single-sex schools produce a higher percentage of graduates who attended four-year colleges and a lower percentage of graduates who attended two-year junior colleges than do coeducational schools. The positive effects of single-sex schools remain substantial, even after we take 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.
尽管关于单性别学校潜力的文献很多，但由于学生对学校类型的选择，单性别学校的效果尚无定论。我们利用了首尔教育的一个独特特征——将学生随机分配到单性别和男女混合高中——来评估单性别学校对大学入学考试成绩和大学入学率的因果影响。我们对随机分配的验证表明，上男女同校和男女混合学校的学生在社会经济背景和先前的学业成绩方面相当，这提高了我们对单性别学校效果的因果估计的可信度。三级层次模型表明，上男校或女校，而不是男女混合学校，与韩国和英语考试成绩的平均分数较高显著相关。应用学区固定效应模型，我们发现单性别学校毕业的学生中，上四年制大学的比例较高，而上两年制初级学院的比例较低，而男女混合学校则相反。即使我们考虑了各种学校层面的变量，如教师质量、师生比、接受午餐支持的学生比例以及学校是公立还是私立，单性别学校的积极影响仍然很大。
