Effects of school displacement on academic achievement and wellbeing of ethnic minorities

Abstract

We analyse short- and medium-term effects of school displacement on ethnic minority children with language support need. We implement a difference-in-differences strategy exploiting variation from closure of two school districts with high shares of ethnic minority pupils combined with a school assignment policy, which left some students residing in closed districts unaffected by the closure. We find strong detrimental effects of school displacement on academic achievement that persist throughout lower-secondary school and postpone high school enrolment. School displacement leads to higher absenteeism and lower wellbeing towards the end of lower-secondary school. We interpret our results as indicative of disruption and negative exposure effects: Taking pupils out of their local social environment and placing them in distant schools both in terms of peer characteristics and geographic distance, and with lower resources, lowers their academic achievement and wellbeing.