The majority of existing research on mobility indicates that students do worse in the year of a school move. This research, however, has been unsuccessful in isolating the causal effects of mobility and often fails to distinguish the heterogeneous impacts of moves, conflating structural moves (mandated by a school's terminal grade) and…

Participation in the federally-subsidized school breakfast program often falls well below its lunchtime counterpart. To increase take-up, many districts have implemented Breakfast in the Classroom (BIC), offering breakfast directly to students at the start of the school day. Beyond increasing participation, advocates claim BIC improves academic…

In this paper we provide the first rigorous evidence of the impact of a partnership between public middle schools and informal science institutions (ISIs), such as museums and zoos, on student outcomes. This study focuses on Urban Advantage (UA), a program in New York City (NYC) that explicitly draws upon the expertise and resources of the city's…

Holding a summer job is a rite of passage in American adolescence, a first rung towards adulthood and self-sufficiency. However, over the past decade, youth employment during the summer has decreased significantly. Summer youth employment has the potential to benefit high school students' educational outcomes and employment trajectories,…

We evaluate the effectiveness of small high school reform in the country's largest school district, New York City. Using a rich administrative dataset for multiple cohorts of students and distance between student residence and school to instrument for endogenous school selection, we find substantial heterogeneity in school effects: newly created…

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…

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…

New York City (NYC) is home to the largest school district in the U.S., with over one million students and more than 1,600 schools. While it is only one of approximately seven hundred school districts in New York State (NYS), the city educates about one-third of the state's students. In recent work examining school finance during Mayor Bloomberg's…

This policy brief presents initial findings of the impact of New York City's Summer Youth Employment Program (SYEP) on academic outcomes for public school students. Despite the broad appeal of providing summer jobs for urban youth, there is little research documenting the relationship between summer employment and educational outcomes for high…

The recent foreclosure crisis has plagued nearly every city in the U.S., including New York City. Despite considerable attention to the causes of these mortgage foreclosures and the consequences they have had for communities, we know little about their impacts on individual families and children. Given that more than 2.8 million U.S. property…

Housing and education share strong ties in the United States. This relationship is shaped, in large part, by mobility. Students move to new schools, homes and neighborhoods as a result of planned and unplanned family relocations. Taxpayers move from one school district to another in a nation where school quality is closely tied to the district in…

The mortgage foreclosure crisis has affected millions of households around the country. Researchers and policy makers have begun to pay attention to the external costs that these foreclosures impose on surrounding properties and neighborhoods (Schuetz et al., 2008; Harding et al., 2009). But few have considered the collateral costs for children,…

Since its inception as part of the 1965 "Elementary and Secondary Education Act" (ESEA), Title I has provided the largest amount of federal funding aimed at improving the academic achievement of poor children. In this paper, we examine the impact of Title I on school spending and school performance, using New York City public school…

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,…

In the United States, public housing developments are predominantly located in neighborhoods with low median incomes, high rates of poverty and disproportionately high concentrations of minorities. While research consistently shows that public housing developments are located in economically and socially disadvantaged neighborhoods, we know little…