School climate and the impact of neighborhood crime on test scores
Open accessAbstract
Does school climate ameliorate or exacerbate the impact of neighborhood violent crime on test scores? Using administrative data from the New York City Department of Education and the New York City Police Department, we find that exposure to violence in the residential neighborhood and an unsafe climate at school lead to substantial test score losses in English language arts (ELA). Middle school students exposed to neighborhood violent crime before the ELA exam who attend schools perceived to be less safe or to have a weak sense of community score 0.06 and 0.03 standard deviations lower, respectively. We find the largest negative effects for boys and Hispanic students in the least safe schools, and no effect of neighborhood crime for students attending schools with better climates.
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Violence in a neighborhood can depress measures of cognitive ability for school-aged (5-17 years old) children in that community.
“Patrick Sharkey has published several studies demonstrating that violence in a neighborhood can depress measures of cognitive ability for school-aged (5–17 years old) children in that community [22,23].”
From Genes, Heritability, ‘Race’, and Intelligence: Misapprehensions and Implications (2022) · cites this paper as [23]
The Discussion reports lower English language arts test scores after neighborhood-violence exposure for sixth- to eighth-grade students attending the least safe schools. It finds no overall significant effect or effect on math scores. The claim extends this conditional test-score finding to children aged 5–17 and describes the outcome more broadly as cognitive ability; the paper does not establish those broader points. (LLM, conf=0.85)
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- Authors
- Laurito, A., Lacoe, J., Schwartz, A. E., Sharkey, P., & Ellen, I. G.
- Affiliations
- University of Illinois Chicago (US)
- Mathematica Policy Research (US)
- Syracuse University (US)
- New York University (US)
- Corresponding author
- Laurito, Agustina
- Lacoe, Johanna
- Schwartz, Amy Ellen
- Sharkey, Patrick
- Ellen, Ingrid Gould
- Venue
- RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences
- Publisher
- Russell Sage Foundation
- Published
- 2019-03
- Volume
- 5
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 141-166
- ISSN
- 2377-8253 (ISSN-L)
- 2377-8261
- PMC
- PMC6545988
- OpenAlex
- W2910693327
- Cited by
- 35
- References
- 35
- Citations by year
- 2026: 2 · 2025: 3 · 2024: 4 · 2023: 7 · 2022: 4 · 2021: 5 · 2020: 6 · 2019: 4
- FWCI
- 9.56
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- diamond
- doi.org
- Licence
- cc-by-nc-nd
- Locations
- RSF The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Project Muse (Johns Hopkins University) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Crime Patterns and Interventions
- Social Sciences › Education › School Choice and Performance
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Urban, Neighborhood, and Segregation Studies
- Keywords
- school climate, neighborhood crime, test scores, academic performance, English language arts, school safety, sense of community, junior high school students, gender differences, Hispanic students, New York City
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