Prof. David Figlio has announced plans to collaborate with researchers from Indiana University, the University of Connecticut and New York University to analyze the effects of foreclosure on children’s academic performance.
A grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation will fund Figlio’s research.
“What we’re interested in seeing is whether the housing crisis and foreclosure crisis have led to destabilization of kids’ homes and schools,” said Figlio, who teaches education, social policy and economics. “We’re interested in not only looking at effects of outcomes of the housing crisis on kids who lost their homes because of it, but also on the schools where many children were affected.”
Figlio and his partners will analyze academic data like test scores in reading and math, attendance, behavior and grade repetition from sites in Florida, New York City and California, which he said were chosen partly because the researchers had good working relationships there and partly because they’re unique cases.
“They were particularly interesting places, and places that had seen rapid increases in housing value and ultimately saw a much larger fraction of people upside-down,” he said.
Although the experts have not yet begun collaborative work on this project, their previous research has guided them have an idea of what to expect, said Ashlyn Aiko Nelson, an assistant professor at Indiana University who will be working with Figlio.
“One of the things we know about right now in the existing education policy literature is that mobility tends to hurt kids,” Nelson said. “Moving hurts kids’ academic achievement.”
Nelson said she is unsure whether the results of the study will elicit public policy changes because there could be multiple factors creating stress on a child forced to move because of foreclosure. It could be due to awareness of financial pressure, family conflict or having to change schools, among other reasons.
“You can’t prevent family-level factors that might precipitate a move,” Nelson said. “From the policy side, the options have been pretty limited besides open enrollment policies, which keep school environment intact.”
For that reason, Nelson said, the study will use comparison groups to try to isolate these factors.
Figlio said conducting this study now will be especially relevant.
“For over a decade, issues of inequality in education, especially social problems, which are consequences for education due to social problems, increased divides between ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots,'” he said. “The foreclosure crisis was particularly interesting here.”
Figlio said there are resources available to involve a graduate student in the project and possibly some undergraduates.
While not because of foreclosure, Weinberg freshman Sarah Hansen said she moved several times during childhood but does not believe she was negatively affected.
“In terms of academic performance, I think I moved a little too young for it to make a big difference,” she said.
She said she even skipped a grade after moving during elementary school but said, “that’s probably not typical.”
Still, she said other changes in her life were less positive.
“Socially it was a little harder I’m sure,” she said. “We got off the plane and the next day my parents put me on a bus to a school I had never seen. They said ‘tell someone you’re new, and they’ll tell you where to go.'”
For those not as academically fortunate as Hansen, Nelson said the study may bring the issue to light.
The study could possibly result in efforts “to keep families where they are,” she said, “so they won’t have these negative education effects later.”
