Impact of the Fair Student Funding Reform for Students With Disabilities

• In Event: AERA Poster Session 3
  In Poster Session: Human Capital and Education Finance

Abstract

This paper studies the impact of NYC Fair Student Funding Reform (which changed NYC's public schools budgets starting in the 2007-08 school year) for students with disabilities. The aim is to understand whether change in school funding impacts enrollment and academic outcomes of students with disabilities and uncover mechanisms to explain this effect. The reform’s staggered two-year implementation and varying treatment intensity across heterogeneous public schools, allows to utilize a difference-in-difference regression framework. Preliminary results suggest that relative to the schools that did not receive additional funding, public elementary and middle schools that benefited from the reform saw an estimated increase in enrollment of 22 students with disabilities for an increase in per student funding.

Author

• S. Sana Fatima, New York University