Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

This paper documents policy-relevant externalities of the many months of civic unrest that followed the police shooting of an unarmed black teenager in Ferguson, MO: statistically significant, arguably causal declines in students’ math and reading achievement. Difference-in-difference estimates that condition on school fixed effects and school time trends find that the percentage of students in Ferguson-area primary schools scoring “below basic” in math and reading increased by about 15 and 10 percentage points, respectively. Decreased attendance is one mechanism through which the civic unrest in Ferguson harmed student achievement, as Ferguson-area schools experienced a statistically significant five percent increase in chronic absence in the year of the unrest. Triple-difference estimates show that achievement in majority-black schools across the state declined as well, though by less than schools in the Ferguson area, which provides additional evidence about the mechanisms through which the racially charged events in Ferguson affected students.