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Urban school districts nationwide have increased within-district choice for families. In response, district policymakers are overhauling the systems for applying to and enrolling in schools, with the goal of making it easier and more equitable for students to enroll in schools that are a good fit for them. These universal enrollment systems offer a one-stop shop for students to learn about different options, submit applications, and receive and accept offers. Using the implementation of such a system in Chicago Public Schools, we examine how applications to, offers from, and enrollment in different types of high schools (e.g., high-performing vs. low-performing schools, charter vs. neighborhood schools) changed. The largest gains appear to be from streamlining applications and offers, with students receiving a single-best offer and schools having more certainty around their incoming ninth-grade class. We do not see changes in the shares of students enrolled at high schools with high graduation rates or at charter schools that can be attributed to the new system. These findings suggest that while universal enrollment systems can improve and simplify the application process, they are not a panacea for inequitable access to attending high-performing schools.

The National Board for Professional Teaching Standards recognizes teachers who meet performance standards for "accomplished" educators. States and districts provide support for teachers to obtain this certification, which is considered an honor in the field. Using high school data from Chicago and Kentucky, we examine whether participation in the time- and resource-intensive certification process improves teacher productivity and, ultimately, if recognized teachers are of higher quality than their non-certified peers. We find the certification process itself did not increase teacher productivity. Further, we find mixed evidence on whether certified teachers are more effective at raising test scores than non-certified teachers.

In 2017, Chicago Public Schools adopted an online universal application system for all high schools with the hope of providing more equitable access to highperformance schools. Despite the new system, Black students and students living in low-socioeconomic status (SES) neighborhoods remained less likely than their peers to enroll in a high-performance high school. In this paper, we characterize various constraints that students and families may face in enrolling in a highperformance high school including eligibility to programs based on prior academic achievement, distance from high-performance options, and neighborhood and elementary school resources. After adjusting for differences in these access factors, we find the gap between Black and Latinx students' likelihood of enrolling in a high-performing high school is reduced by about 80 percent. We find a similarly large reduction in the enrollment gap between students from low- and middle-SES neighborhoods after adjusting for eligibility and distance factors. These findings have implications for policies that may help equalize access to high-performance schools through changes to eligibility requirements and improved transportation options.

We investigate whether elite Chicago public high schools can help close the achievement gap between high-achieving students from more and less affluent neighborhoods. Seats are allocated based on prior achievement with 70 percent reserved for high-achieving applicants from four neighborhood socioeconomic status (SES) categories. Using regression discontinuity design, we find no effect on test scores or college attendance for students from high- or low-SES neighborhoods and positive effects on student reports of their experiences. For students from low-SES neighborhoods, we estimate significant negative effects on rank in high school, grades, and the probability of attending a selective college.