Do Refugee Students Affect the Academic Achievement of their Peers? Evidence from a Large Urban School District
Morales, Camila N.
Citations
Abstract
Much of the recent debate on refugee resettlement focuses on its perceived adverse effects on local communities. However, there is sparse credible evidence to either support or refute this perception. This paper contributes to an emerging literature on the externalities of refugee integration, providing evidence on how this population affects the behavior and performance of incumbent students. I leverage variation in the share of refugees within schools and across grades to estimate the causal effect of having refugee peers on the English Language Arts (ELA) and Math test scores of non-refugee students. I also estimate refugee peer effects on non-academic outcomes such as student absenteeism and disciplinary incidents. On average, estimates suggest that increasing the share of grade-level refugees by 1 percentage point is associated with a 0.01 standard deviation increase in Math test scores. While I find no effect on average ELA test scores, using nonlinear in-means specifications I find evidence of negative spillovers in ELA performance among low achieving students and positive spillovers among high-achieving students
