ABSTRACT
Many public school diversity efforts rely on reassigning students from one school to another. While opponents of such efforts articulate concerns about the consequences of reassignments for students' educational experiences, little evidence exists regarding these effects, particularly in contemporary policy contexts. Using an event study design, we leverage data from an innovative socioeconomic school desegregation plan to estimate the effects of reassignment on reassigned students' achievement, attendance, and exposure to exclusionary discipline. Between 2000 and 2010, North Carolina's Wake County Public School System (WCPSS) reassigned approximately 25 percent of students with the goal of creating socioeconomically diverse schools. Although WCPSS's controlled school choice policy provided opportunities for reassigned students to opt out of their newly reassigned schools, our analysis indicates that reassigned students typically attended their newly reassigned schools. We find that reassignment modestly boosts reassigned students' math achievement, reduces reassigned students' rate of suspension, and has no offsetting negative consequences on other outcomes. Exploratory analyses suggest that the effects of reassignment do not meaningfully vary by student characteristics or school choice decisions. The results suggest that carefully designed school assignment policies can improve school diversity without imposing academic or disciplinary costs on reassigned students.
ABSTRACT
A body mass index (BMI) ≥25 kg/m2 is linked to worse health outcomes. Little is known about women's awareness of their BMI and their awareness of associations between high BMI and cardiovascular and gynecologic diseases. We investigated perceived versus actual BMI of women in an outpatient women's health clinic and determined awareness of health risks linked to high BMI. We administered an anonymous survey to women presenting for health care in gynecological services at an urban OB/GYN women's health clinic. We used a Kappa test to determine agreement between perceived versus actual BMI category (defined using CDC guidelines) and Fisher's exact tests to determine rates of awareness of health risks linked to high BMI. One-hundred seventeen women (84% African-American) participated in ≥1 portion of the survey. Mean age = 31.03 ± 9.54 years; mean BMI = 33.8 ± 10 kg/m2. Of 76 respondents, 50 underestimated their BMI category (p < .01). Women were unaware that high BMI was linked to gynecologic outcomes and earlier death (<58% of women reported awareness for each outcome; p > .09 for all). Women seeking outpatient gynecologic care did not accurately perceive BMI and were unlikely to associate high BMI with gynecologic conditions. Improved awareness of BMI and health risks of obesity are educational opportunities for women.
