Katrina's Children: Evidence on the Structure of Peer Effects from Hurricane Evacuees

Abstract

In 2005, hurricanes Katrina and Rita forced many children to relocate across the Southeast. While schools quickly enrolled evacuees, receiving families worried about the impact of evacuees on non-evacuee students. Data from Houston and Louisiana show that, on average, the influx of evacuees moderately reduced elementary math test scores in Houston. We reject linear-in-means models of peer effects and find evidence of a highly non-linear but monotonic model-student achievement improves with high ability and worsens with low ability peers. Moreover, exposure to undisciplined evacuees increased native absenteeism and disciplinary problems, supporting a "bad apple" model in behavior.

The effect of school closings on student achievement

“…In addition, the policy environments are much different. For instance, the peer effects generated by Katrina evacuees in Houston, as studied by Imberman et al (2012), are likely different than those generated by closing schools and shifting students to another school within the same school district.…”

“…5 See Guryan (2004) or Reber (2010) for studies on the effects of desegregation policies and student outcomes. Imberman et al (2012) and Angrist and Lang (2004) are prominent examples of studies that use exogenous movement of students to estimate the magnitude and structure of peer effects. by a school closing.…”

Ethnic enclaves in the classroom

“…Lavy and Schlosser (forthcoming) find from student and teacher reports that a higher proportion of girls in a class reduces disruption, noise and violence, as well as teacher fatigue, primarily through a composition effect: girls are less likely to be disruptive or violent. Imberman et al (2009) find that Katrina evacuees in Houston had an above-average rate of absenteeism and disciplinary infractions, and were associated with increased absenteeism and disciplinary infractions among peers. Both of these studies, like ours, find that peers have a more pronounced effect on math achievement than on reading, suggesting that the classroom environment may play a larger role in the acquisition of math skills.…”

“…Manski (1993) shows that contextual and endogenous effects are not separately identified in a linear model without an exclusion restriction. While many papers in this literature (e.g., Hanushek et al, 2003) focus on measuring endogenous effects, we follow another branch of the literature (e.g., Hanushek et al, 2009;Lavy and Schlosser, forthcoming;Imberman et al, 2009;Black et al, 2010) in focusing on contextual effects. Because it includes only contextual effects, Eq.…”

Dressed for success? The effect of school uniforms on student achievement and behavior

“…Another possibility is that improvements generated by uniforms could induce students with behavioral problems who would otherwise have attended alternative education environments such as charter schools or dropped out of school to remain in the public school. This could ultimately reverse improvements from uniforms via negative peer effects (Carrell and Hoekstra, 2010;Gaviria and Raphel, 2001;Figlio, 2007;Imberman et al, forthcoming). On the other hand, such an impetus to remain in the public schools could also occur for high quality students, and thus uniforms could generate a positive peer-effect in the long-run.…”