Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Recently, there has been a move towards K-8 schools as opposed to stand-alone middle schools. In this paper, we examine the effect of enrollment in a stand-alone middle school relative to a K-8 school using a longitudinal data from an anonymous district. The choice to enroll in a K-8 or middle schools is potentially endogenous because of either residential choice or school choice. Previously, research has used the terminal grade of the school in which students were enrolled in grade 3 as the instrument in an instrumental variable (IV) approach to correct for this potential endogeneity. However, this approach controls for the endogeneity of middle school choice in grade 5, but does not take into account the original decision in grade 3 or earlier of where to live or whether to enroll in a K-5 or a K-8. Therefore, we employ a second strategy to correct for the endogeneity that leverages the fact that the anonymous district closed several schools and rezoned their students to other schools with new boundaries. We compare students on one side of the new boundaries assigned to a middle school to students on the other side of the new boundaries assigned to a K-8 school. School closure and reassignment provide us an opportunity to address the endogeneity that arises not only from moving between schools, but also from the original choice of type of school. We then compare these results to the results we obtain from the same IV approach used by the previous research. The results from the geographic boundary approach are less supportive of a K-8 policy than the results we obtain from the IV approach.