Does starting school before labor day affect high school retention and graduation: evidence from Virginia’s kings dominion law

ABSTRACT

Several states have required K-12 public schools to start after Labour Day in an effort to aid the tourism and hospitality industry. However, little is known about how these policies impact educational outcomes. We examine the impact of Virginia’s post-Labour Day school start law on high school retention and graduation rates. We use a difference-in-differences model to exploit exogenous variation in school division start dates. Our results show small differences of up to three weeks have little effect on high school dropout and graduation rates. Our findings inform the debate on post-Labour Day school start laws and compulsory attendance age cut-off laws.

KEYWORDS:

• Labour Day School Start
• graduation rates
• retention rates
• age effects

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• codes: I20
• I21
• J29

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ http://comptroller.marylandtaxes.gov/Public_Services/Agency_Information/Office_of_the_Comptroller/Comptroller_Initiatives/Schools_After_Labour_Day_BRE_Study.pdf

² For more detailed discussion of the Virginia policy see Dragas Center for Economic Analysis and Policy (2018).

³ For an inclement weather waiver a schools division must have closed an average of eight days per year during any five of the last ten years because of severe weather conditions, power failures or other emergency situations.

⁴ 180 calendar days or 990 instructional hours for grades one through twelve.

⁵ Source: Code of Virginia, 22.1–199. Kindergarten programs suitable for certain children. Available online here: https://law.lis.virginia.gov/vacode/title22.1/chapter13/section22.1-199/.

⁶ The on-time graduation rate captures student progress through high school in the ‘normal’ amount of time.

⁷ Due to data availability for per pupil educational spending and local unemployment rate being limited by specific geographical boundaries in Virginia, we chose to exclude two school divisions from the main analysis: Colonial Beach and West Point. Results are consistent as those shown below when included and not controlling for spending nor unemployment.

⁸ “Economically disadvantaged is defined as 1) eligible for Free/Reduced Meals, or 2) receives TANF, or 3) eligible for Medicaid, or 4) identified as either migrant or experiencing homelessness. For more information see: http://www.doe.virginia.gov/statistics_reports/research_data/data_elements.shtml.

⁹ For more information on placebo regression see Bertrand, Duflo, and Mullainathan (2004). Furthermore, we implemented an event-study design by using leads and lags of each indicator variable. These results did not show evidence that our estimates are driven by a pre-existing trend and are available upon request.