Vanderbilt Professor to Discuss Effect of Closing Schools

Ron Zimmer, associate professor of public policy and education at Vanderbilt University, will speak at noon Jan. 27 on the University of Arkansas campus about "Closing Schools in a Shrinking District: Do Student Outcomes Depend on Which Schools are Closed?"

Zimmer's lecture is part of the series sponsored by the department of education reform in the College of Education and Health Professions. It will be in Room 343 of the Graduate Education Building.

The lecture is free and open to the public and lunch will be served. To RSVP, visit the lecture series website.

Zimmer will base his talk on a paper of the same name he co-authored for a forthcoming issue of Journal of Urban Economics. The journal article examined an urban district that, when faced with declining enrollment, chose to make student achievement a major criterion in determining which schools would be closed.

Research described in the paper found that students displaced by school closings can experience adverse effects on test scores and attendance, but these effects can be minimized when students move to schools that are higher-performing. The researchers also found that the negative effect on attendance disappears after the first year in the new school and no adverse effects were found on students in the schools that receive the transferring students.