Texas’ 10% Plan Found to Influence Choice of High School

A significant share of young people in Texas select a high school based on whether they are likely to graduate with a class rank high enough to guarantee them admission to any Texas public college under the state’s “top-10-percent plan,” a new study concludes. Such decisions to enroll in high school based on class-rank considerations have the effect of making many such high schools slightly more racially integrated while knocking minority students out of the pool of college applicants qualifying for the state’s class-rank-based college-admission guarantee, the researchers found. The study, available on the Web site of the National Bureau of Economic Research, was conducted by Julie Berry Cullen, an associate professor of economics at the University of California at San Diego; Mark C. Long, an associate professor of public affairs at the University of Washington; and Randall Reback, an assistant professor of economics at Barnard College.