Does New School Construction Impact Student Test Scores and Attendance?

This policy brief explores the question “Does New School Construction Impact Student Test Scores and Attendance?” Using data from the Los Angeles Unified School District, the authors find that attending a newly constructed school yields improvements in test scores, attendance, and teacher-reported measures of student effort. These results suggest attending a newly constructed school for four years can eliminate almost half of the math achievement gap between LAUSD students and the state average, and almost 20% of the English gap.