The Impact of Year-Round Schooling on Academic Achievement: Evidence from Mandatory School Calendar Conversions
Abstract
In 2007, 22 Wake County, North Carolina traditional calendar schools were switched to year-round calendars, spreading the 180 instructional days evenly across the year. This paper presents a human capital model to illustrate the conditions under which these calendars might affect achievement. We then exploit the natural experiment to evaluate the impact of year-round schooling on student achievement using a multi-level fixed effects model. Results suggest that year-round schooling has essentially no impact on academic achievement of the average student. Moreover, when the data are broken out by race, we find no evidence that any racial subgroup benefits from year-round schooling. (JEL H75, I21, I28, J24)
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Self-citation
- Authors
- McMullen, S. C., & Rouse, K. E.
- Affiliations
- Calvin University (US)
- Elon University (US)
- Venue
- American Economic Journal: Economic Policy
- Publisher
- American Economic Association
- Published
- 2012-11-01
- Volume
- 4
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 230-252
- ISSN
- 1945-7731 (ISSN-L)
- 1945-774X
- OpenAlex
- W2075538378
- Semantic Scholar
- 8370bdd377dbcb9ee05e23803930bd1c5e687558
- Cited by
- 44
- References
- 25
- Citations by year
- 2025: 1 · 2024: 1 · 2023: 2 · 2022: 1 · 2021: 2 · 2020: 4 · 2019: 8 · 2018: 4 · 2017: 2 · 2016: 7 · 2015: 4 · 2014: 2 · 2013: 4 · 2012: 2
- FWCI
- 18.51
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- American Economic Journal Economic Policy (publishedVersion)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Education › School Choice and Performance
- Social Sciences › Education › Early Childhood Education and Development
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › Information Systems and Management › Educational Assessment and Improvement
- Keywords
- year-round schooling, academic performance, human capital model, racial inequality in education, Wake County, North Carolina, natural experiment
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