Browsing by Author "Izadi, Ramin"

During the last two decades, many municipalities in Finland have attempted to cut costs by closing down small schools. Especially rural schools with low enrollment have been the target of these savings. This continuing tendency has raised many concerns on the effect of school closings on students, and remains a controversial issue in public discourse. The current study examines 600 students from rural schools, who were displaced due to school shut downs during 1999–2000 in the last years of their primary education. Relative to previous literature, where bad school performance has influenced school shut downs, in the setting of the present study only cost savings are used to justify school closings. Additionally, because of the rural setting, the effects of displacement include increases in school trips as well as in school size. To address the non-random displacement of students, the effect of school closures on student grades and high school graduation rates are estimated by comparing the displaced students to control students that are matched based on a number of relevant covariates. I find no adverse effects of school closures on any of the measured outcomes. This implies that negative effects on students' school performance does not have empirical support as an objection to the school closing policies.