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414Taking the policy of “synchronous and lottery enrollment for private schools” implemented in Shanghai in March 2020 as a case study, this paper constructs a competitive equilibrium model for school choice to analyze the impact mechanism of the policy and evaluates the policy effect using a DID model. The findings are as follows: (1) After the policy was implemented, the rent near private middle schools in Shanghai decreased by about 0.86%, indicating a decline in the popularity of private middle schools, so that the policy’s initial goal of equalizing starting points was achieved. However, the policy also led to a 3.75% increase in housing prices in the main urban areas of Shanghai, resulting in a spillover risk of educational inequality caused by “choosing schools based on housing”. (2) After the policy was implemented, families investing in school district housing paid more attention to the educational quality of public middle schools. This led to a significant 10.9% increase in housing prices for districts where primary schools are in the third tier but middle schools are in the first tier, while prices for districts where primary schools are in the first tier but middle schools are in the third tier decreased significantly by 2.71%, leading to the “flattening peaks and filling valleys” phenomenon. (3) The “multi-school zoning” reform significantly weakened the educational capitalization premium brought about by the policy. This indicates that reforms based on “starting-point equalization” may lead to a spillover risk of educational inequality while creating a fair starting line.
The marginal contributions of this paper are as follows: First, it introduces the uncertainty of public services into the competitive equilibrium model for school choice, and evaluates the risk spillover and policy synergy effects after the implementation of the policy, enriching the theoretical research on the capitalization effect of public services. Second, it focuses on the “opportunity equalization” policy effect of fair starting line, providing new evidence for the policy effect research of China’s equalization reform measures in basic education. Third, it illustrates that unavoidable implicit social costs in mandatory institutional transitions can be mitigated through policy synergy, offering policy insights into the practice of public service equalization.
