Impacts of fiscal stress labels on student achievement and achievement gaps

Abstract This paper considers the effects of Ohio fiscal stress labels on student achievement and achievement gaps. We estimate data on math and English Language Arts achievement and achievement gaps in school districts from 2009 to 2018. Two‐way fixed effects estimates indicate that student achievement declines by between 0.038 and 0.048 standard deviations when their schools receive a fiscal stress label designation, although these effects become insignificant when using stacked differences‐in‐differences. We find that fiscal stress label receipt leads to a statistically significant closing of the White–Black achievement gap, but find more negligible changes in the achievement gaps across gender and socioeconomic groups.