Caught in the Storm: The Effect of Natural Disasters on Academic Performance and Achievement Gaps

Public policy scholar Sarah Fuller will examine achievement data from the Stanford Education Data Archive (SEDA) and data on disaster declarations in order to identify the effect of being exposed to a natural disaster on achievement. The data will be analyzed using difference-in-differences and event study methodologies to examine how test scores change in districts impacted by a disaster relative to unaffected districts. The analysis will also examine heterogeneity in effects across different subgroups of students to develop an understanding of how natural disasters contribute to achievement gaps between students of different races/ethnicities and different socioeconomic statuses.