Who Benefits from Accountability-Driven School Closure? Evidence from New York City

Bob Bifulco () and David Schwegman
Additional contact information
Bob Bifulco: Center for Policy Research, Maxwell School, Syracuse University, 426 Eggers Hall, Syracuse, NY 13244, https://www.maxwell.syr.edu/directory/robert-bifulco
David Schwegman: enter for Policy Research, Maxwell School, Syracuse University, 426 Eggers Hall, Syracuse, NY 13244

No 212, Center for Policy Research Working Papers from Center for Policy Research, Maxwell School, Syracuse University

Abstract: We estimate the effects of accountability-driven school closure in New York City on students who attended middle schools that were closed at the time of closure and students who would have likely attended a closed middle school had it remained open. We find that students who would have entered the closed school, had it not closed, attended schools that perform better on standardized exams and have higher value-added measures than did the closed schools. While we find that closure did not have any measurable effect on the average student in this group, we do find that high-performing students in this group attended higher-performing schools and experienced economically-meaningful and statistically-significant improvements in their sixth, seventh, and eighth-grade math test scores. We find that these benefits persisted for several cohorts after closure. We also find that closure adversely affected students, low-performing students in particular, who were attending schools that closed. For policymakers, our results highlight a key tradeoff of closing a low-performing school: future cohorts of relatively high-performing students may benefit from closure while low-performing students in schools designated for closure are adversely affected.

Keywords: School Closure; School Accountability; Urban School Reform (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I20 I21 I28 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 66 pages
Date: 2018-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ure
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://surface.syr.edu/cpr/244/ (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:max:cprwps:212

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Center for Policy Research Working Papers from Center for Policy Research, Maxwell School, Syracuse University 426 Eggers Hall, Syracuse, New York USA 13244-1020. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Katrina Fiacchi ().