Between 1999 and 2018, 210 shootings have occurred on public school campuses in the United States. The increased need for security and student support may crowd out instructional resources post-shooting. Shootings may also cause students, especially those from socioeconomically advantaged backgrounds, to move away, leading to declines in enrollment. Both changes in the budget allocation and the student composition could exert a negative impact on achievement. First, we examine the effects of campus shootings on public school districts’ revenue, expenditure, debt, and staffing using a long panel of district-year data. Results from event study and difference-in-differences analyses indicate that shootings increase per-pupil spending by $248, which is funded primarily through increased federal transfers. Most spending increases occur in noninstructional functions, such as pupil support services, and capital projects, but they do not crowd out instructional spending. Using school-level data, we show that shootings are followed by a decline in enrollment, driven almost exclusively by reductions in students who do not receive free or reduced-price lunch. Private schools in the area also experience enrollment drop. In sum, despite the increased intergovernmental transfers, campus shootings reduce the desirability of the community and lead to the exit of relatively well-off families.

In the past few decades, we have seen a rapid proliferation in the use of quasiexperimental research designs in education research. This trend, stemming in part from the “credibility revolution” in the social sciences, particularly economics, is notable along with the increasing use of randomized controlled trials in the strive toward rigorous causal inference. The overarching purpose of this chapter is to explore and document the growth, applicability, promise, and limitations of quasi-experimental research designs in education research. We first provide an overview of widely used quasi-experimental research methods in this growing literature, with particular emphasis on articles from the top ranked education research journals, including those published by the American Educational Research Association. Next, we demonstrate the applicability and promise of these methods in enhancing our understanding of the causal effects of education policies and interventions using key examples and case studies culled from the extant literature across the pre-K–16 education spectrum. Finally, we explore the limitations of these methods and conclude with thoughts on how education researchers can adapt these innovative, interdisciplinary techniques to further our understanding of some of the most enduring questions in educational policy and practice.

We explore the discipline gap between Black and White students and between Hispanic and White students using a statewide student-level panel data set on Indiana public school students attending prekindergarten through 12th grade from 2008–2009 through 2013–2014. We demonstrate that the Black-White disciplinary gaps, defined in a variety of ways and robust to a series of specification tests, emerge as early as in prekindergarten and widen with grade progression. The magnitude of these disciplinary gaps attenuates by about half when we control for many student- and school-level characteristics, but it persists within districts and schools. In contrast, we find that Hispanic-White gaps are initially null and statistically insignificant at the prekindergarten/kindergarten level and attenuate substantially after adjustment for cross-school (district) variation and other covariates. We further disentangle the discipline gap using a decomposition technique that provides empirical support for the hypothesis that Black students nonrandomly sort into more punitive disciplinary environments.