PT - JOURNAL ARTICLE AU - Szlendak, Zachary AU - Mansfield, Richard TI - Who Benefits from a Smaller Honors Track? AID - 10.3368/jhr.0622-12391R1 DP - 2024 Feb 05 TA - Journal of Human Resources PG - 0622-12391R1 4099 - http://jhr.uwpress.org/content/early/2024/01/30/jhr.0622-12391R1.short 4100 - http://jhr.uwpress.org/content/early/2024/01/30/jhr.0622-12391R1.full AB - This paper characterizes the efficiency and distributional impact of changing the share of students enrolling in honors classrooms. Using North Carolina high school data, we estimate functions capturing the test score impact of alternative honors enrollment shares by predicted performance quintile. We find that smaller honors tracks (20%-30% of students) yield moderate performance gains for top quintile students (~.05-.07 score SDs relative to trackless courses) that decline monotonically across quintiles toward zero for bottom quintile students. However, expanding the honors share beyond 30-35% generates further (small) gains only for the middle quintile, while reducing top quintile gains and causing substantial bottom quintile losses.