Working Paper: NBER ID: w21055
Authors: Seth Gershenson; Erdal Tekin
Abstract: Community traumatic events such as mass shootings, terrorist attacks, and natural or man-made disasters have the potential to disrupt student learning in numerous ways. For example, these events can reduce instructional time by causing teacher and student absences, school closures, and disturbances to usual classroom routines. Similarly, they might also disrupt home environments. This paper uses a quasi-experimental research design to identify the effects of the 2002 “Beltway Sniper” attacks on student achievement in Virginia’s public elementary schools. In order to identify the causal impact of these events, the empirical analysis uses a difference-in-differences strategy that exploits geographic variation in schools’ proximity to the attacks. The main results indicate that the attacks significantly reduced school-level proficiency rates in schools within five miles of an attack. Evidence of a causal effect is most robust for math proficiency rates in the third and fifth grades, and third grade reading proficiency, suggesting that the shootings caused a decline in school proficiency rates of about five to nine percentage points. Particularly concerning from an equity standpoint, these effects appear to be entirely driven by achievement declines in schools that serve higher proportions of racial minority and socioeconomically disadvantaged students. Finally, results from supplementary analyses suggest that these deleterious effects faded out in subsequent years.
Keywords: Community traumatic events; Student achievement; Beltway sniper attacks; Difference-in-differences; Proficiency rates
JEL Codes: I12; I21; I24; K42
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| Beltway sniper attacks (Y50) | school-level proficiency rates (A21) |
| Beltway sniper attacks (Y50) | math proficiency rates in third and fifth grades (C12) |
| Beltway sniper attacks (Y50) | third-grade reading proficiency (A21) |
| Beltway sniper attacks (Y50) | academic achievement (I24) |
| Beltway sniper attacks (Y50) | declines in achievement in schools serving higher proportions of racial minority and socioeconomically disadvantaged students (I24) |
| Beltway sniper attacks (Y50) | negative impacts on academic achievement in subsequent years (I24) |