TY - JOUR AU - Hanushek,Eric A. AU - Kain,John F. AU - Rivkin,Steven G. TI - Disruption versus Tiebout Improvement: The Costs and Benefits of Switching Schools JF - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series VL - No. 8479 PY - 2001 Y2 - September 2001 UR - http://www.nber.org/papers/w8479 L1 - http://www.nber.org/papers/w8479.pdf N1 - Author contact info: Eric A. Hanushek Hoover Institution Stanford University Stanford, CA 94305-6010 Tel: 650/736-0942 Fax: 650/723-1687 E-Mail: hanushek@stanford.edu John Kain Director Cecil and Ida Green Center for the Study of Scienc Mail Station GC21 P.O. Box 830688 Richardson, TX 75083-0688 Tel: 972-883-2555 E-Mail: N/A user is deceased Steven G. Rivkin Department of Economics University of Illinois at Chicago 601 South Morgan UH725 M/C144 Chicago, IL 60607 Tel: 312.413.2368 E-Mail: sgrivkin@uic.edu AB - Most students change schools at some point in their academic careers, but some change very frequently and some schools experience a great deal of turnover. Many researchers, teachers, and administrators argue that mobility harms students, particularly disadvantaged students in high turnover, inner city schools. On the other hand, economists emphasize the importance of Tiebout type moves to procure better school quality. Empirical research on mobility has yielded inconclusive results, no doubt in part because of small sample sizes and the difficulty of separating mobility effects from other confounding factors. This paper develops a general theoretical model that identifies school quality changes resulting from moving. The empirical analysis, which exploits the rich longitudinal data of the UTD Texas Schools Project, disentangles the disruption effects associated with moves from changes in school quality. The results suggest that there is a small average increase in school quality for district switchers, while there is no evidence that those switching schools within districts obtain higher school quality on average. Perhaps most important for policy, the results also show a significant externality from moves: students in schools with high turnover suffer a disadvantage, and the cost is largest for lower income and minority students who typically attend much higher turnover schools. ER -