The Impact of Rosenwald Schools on Black Achievement

Abstract

The Black-White gap in schooling among Southern-born men narrowed sharply between the World Wars. From 1914 to 1931, nearly 5,000 schools were constructed as part of the Rosenwald Rural Schools Initiative. Using Census data and World War II records, we find that the Rosenwald program accounts for a sizable portion of the educational gains of rural Southern Blacks. We find significant effects on school attendance, literacy, years of schooling, cognitive test scores, and Northern migration. The gains are highest in the most disadvantaged counties, suggesting that schooling treatments have the largest impact among those with limited access to education.

The Intergenerational Transmission of Human Capital: Evidence from the Golden Age of Upward Mobility

“…While black families had little power over public school resources, there were some mechanisms for local input. For example, the Rosenwald school construction program (Donohue et al, 2002;Aaronson and Mazumder, 2011) required co-funding by local black organizations, which potentially created an endogenous local component of school quality. We are able to control for exposure to Rosenwald schools: like Carruthers and Wanamaker (2013) we find that by 1940 the impacts were small.…”

Black-White Differences in Inter-Generational Economic Mobility in the U.S.

“…Similar to previous studies that have looked at static gaps in black-white earnings and college-going rates using NLSY data (for example, Neal and Johnson, 1996;Cameron and Heckman, 2001), it is apparent that the cumulative effects of a variety of influences that affect cognitive ability by adolescence play a critical role in accounting for racial differences in upward and downward mobility. A growing literature has shown that black-white differences in test scores, and military test scores in particular, have been narrowed through large-scale policy interventions throughout American history (for example, Chay, Guryan, and Mazumder, 2009;Aaronson and Mazumder, 2011). Other studies (for example, Dobbie and Fryer, 2011) have also shown the potential for modern educational interventions to improve the black-white gap in educational achievement.…”

“…6 A growing literature suggests that black-white differences in test scores can be strongly affected by environmental influences. For example, see Chay, Guryan, and Mazumder (2009) and Aaronson and Mazumder (2011). 7 There may be other race-specific behavioral differences that can affect the interpretation of economic gaps that adjust only for AFQT scores.…”

“… Following Bhattacharya and Mazumder (2011), I use locally weighted regressions and calculate standard errors using the bootstrap method.28 A growing number of studies(Neal and Johnson, 1996;Hansen, Heckman, and Mullen, 2004;Cascio and Lewis, 2006;Chay, Guryan, and Mazumder, 2009;and Aaronson and Mazumder, 2011) have shown that environmental influences can have large effects on military test scores and narrow racial differences.29 The latter category includes those whose parents were ever separated, divorced, or widowed. The sample includes those who were given the marital history topical module in the SIPP and who had non-missing data.…”

Long-Run Impacts of Agricultural Shocks on Educational Attainment: Evidence from the Boll Weevil

“…A possible threat to validity regards shocks to educational resources and requirements contemporaneous with the weevil infestation. Events that overlapped in timing with the boll weevil's spread and significantly affected educational attainment include the passage of compulsory school attendance laws (Lleras-Muney 2002) and the construction of Rosenwald schools (Aaronson and Mazumder 2011). If the passage of compulsory schooling laws or Rosenwald school construction were correlated with the onset of the boll weevil infestation, this could result in spurious correlation between boll weevil exposure and student outcomes.…”