TY - JOUR AU - Ananat,Elizabeth Oltmans AU - Gassman-Pines,Anna AU - Francis,Dania V. AU - Gibson-Davis,Christina M. TI - Children Left Behind: The Effects of Statewide Job Loss on Student Achievement JF - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series VL - No. 17104 PY - 2011 Y2 - June 2011 UR - http://www.nber.org/papers/w17104 L1 - http://www.nber.org/papers/w17104.pdf N1 - Author contact info: Elizabeth Ananat Sanford Institute of Public Policy Duke University Box 90245 Durham, NC 27708 Tel: 919/613-7302 Fax: 919/681-8288 E-Mail: eoananat@duke.edu Anna Gassman-Pines Sanford Building Duke University Box 90245 Durham, NC 27708 E-Mail: agassman.pines@duke.edu Dania V. Francis Sanford Building Duke University Box 90245 Durham, NC 27708 E-Mail: dania.frank@duke.edu Christina M. Gibson-Davis Sanford Building Duke University Box 90245 Durham, NC 27708 E-Mail: cgibson@duke.edu AB - Given the magnitude of the recent recession, and the high-stakes testing the U.S. has implemented under the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), it is important to understand the effects of large-scale job losses on student achievement. We examine the effects of state-level job losses on fourth- and eighth-grade test scores, using federal Mass Layoff Statistics and 1996-2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress data. Results indicate that job losses decrease scores. Effects are larger for eighth than fourth graders and for math than reading assessments, and are robust to specification checks. Job losses to 1% of a state’s working-age population lead to a .076 standard deviation decrease in the state’s eighth-grade math scores. This result is an order of magnitude larger than those found in previous studies that have compared students whose parents lose employment to otherwise similar students, suggesting that downturns affect all students, not just students who experience parental job loss. Our findings have important implications for accountability schemes: we calculate that a state experiencing one-year job losses to 2% of its workers (a magnitude observed in seven states) likely sees a 16% increase in the share of its schools failing to make Adequate Yearly Progress under NCLB. ER -