Location advantages and sorting in high school education

This study examines how the neighborhood socioeconomic status differentiates school quality. To address this issue, we exploit the elimination of school zones in public high schools in Nagasaki City, Japan. Before the elimination in 2002, the local government assigned students to each school depending on test scores and residence to equalize the educational level across schools. While the reform enabled the students to choose a school on their own, the gap in academic performance across schools has widened. We found that one possible reason for this gap is the concentration of students from highly educated areas to schools with location advantages in terms of accessibility.