In the 40-plus years since the "Individuals with Disabilities Education Act," special education has grown in the number of students and amount spent on services. Despite this growth, academic performance of students with disabilities remains troublingly low compared to general education students. To some extent, these differences reflect…

This study examines the effects of negative equity on children's academic performance, using data on children attending Florida public schools and housing transactions from the State of Florida. Our empirical strategy exploits variation over time in the timing of family moves to Florida in order to account for household sorting into neighborhoods…

The Housing Choice Voucher program is currently the largest federally funded housing assistance program. Although the program aims to provide housing assistance, it also could affect children's educational outcomes by stabilizing their families, enabling them to move to better homes, neighborhoods, and schools, and increasing their disposable…

While school choice has been well studied, there is little existing research exploring the role of transportation, in general, and school buses, in particular, to school choice decisions. We examine the effect of school buses on school choice decisions using data on kindergarten students and their eligibility for transportation assistance in New…

This article explores inequity in access to and provision of bus service across student sociodemographic groups and examines possible barriers to bus access and utilization. To so do, we use administrative data on New York City K-6 public school students from 2011-2017, including information on race/ethnicity, poverty status, distance from home to…

School buses may be a critical education policy lever, breaking the link between schools and neighborhoods and facilitating access to school choice. Yet little is known about the commute for bus riders, including the average length of the bus ride or whether long commutes harm academic outcomes. We begin to fill this gap using data from New York…

Using uniquely detailed individual-level data on transportation provided to all New York City public school students, we examine the relationship between transportation use and school quality for elementary school students (K-5). We find that students who attend choice schools are more likely to use transportation (either school bus or free public…

Across the country and in urban areas in particular, many students change schools during the academic year. While much research documents the impact of changing schools on the academic achievement of mobile students themselves, less research explores whether new arrivals have negative spillovers on stable classmates. The lack of research on…

This paper examines the effect of exposure to violent crime on students' standardized test performance among a sample of students in New York City public schools. To identify the effect of exposure to community violence on children's test scores, we compare students exposed to an incident of violent crime on their own blockface in the week prior…

Schools are not static entities--reforms are enacted, curriculums change, new principals and teachers arrive and others leave, and, importantly, students exit and enter the school system. These students may be graduating or reaching a terminal grade, beginning school, entering from local private or parochial schools, moving from another district,…

We examine the size and distribution of the gap in test scores across races within New York City public schools and the factors that explain these gaps. While gaps are partially explained by differences in student characteristics, such as poverty, differences in schools attended are also important. At the same time, substantial within-school gaps…

Although the No Child Left Behind Act was intended to help "all students meet high academic standards," it is focused on subgroups of low-achieving students. The authors analyze the possible impact of the legislation's requirement for performance reporting by racial subgroup in light of the considerable racial segregation in U.S.…

Immigration and migration to New York City (NYC) collectively create a dynamic population of students. In this brief the authors use a decade of detailed, longitudinal data on NYC's 1st-8th graders to explore both the "stock" of students enrolled and the "flow" of new entrants in each academic year. Together, these paint a…

State and federal accountability reforms are putting considerable pressure on schools to increase the achievement of historically low-performing groups of students and to close test score gaps. In this article, we exploit the differences among the large number of elementary schools in New York City to examine how much schools vary in the…

This report describes the demographic characteristics and educational experiences of immigrant students in New York City's elementary and middle schools. Immigrants comprise a substantial share of the elementary and middle school student body. Far more immigrant than native-born students are limited English proficient (LEP) and Asian, and far…