SPEA professor and colleagues study foreclosures' impact on students

School of Public and Environmental Affairs assistant professor Ashlyn Nelson and six of her colleagues from New York University, Northwestern University and University of Connecticut were granted $800,000 by the MacArthur Foundation to assist their study of the impact of home foreclosures on academic performance.

Nelson said the study matches the addresses of foreclosed homes with student addresses provided by the four districts with which her group is working. She said the magnified impact of the recession on these school districts made them perfect participants for this study.

“The reason why we selected these sites is that they expected unprecedented foreclosures in the recent crisis,” Nelson said. “In particular in the Florida and California sites, they had more than double the national average of foreclosures.”

Nelson said the underlying concept of this study is not new, but what they may be able to find from this particular set of data is.

“There’s a big body of research saying mobility is bad for kids, but it’s really difficult to say why mobility is bad for kids because you don’t necessarily know why kids have to move,” Nelson said. “This gives us an opportunity to look at a specific reason for moving and see what the effects on kids are.”

One of Nelson’s colleagues involved in this study is David Figlio, professor of education and economics at Northwestern University, who has studied education disparities for almost two decades. He said some of the variables that made it hard to determine causality before the crisis still exist in the study.

“It’s not like foreclosures happen at random,” Figlio said. “Families that might be experiencing foreclosures, chances are good they’re facing other types of financial hardship. There could be other aspects of stress in their lives.”

Nelson and Figlio’s K-12 study primarily focuses on third through eighth graders due to the consistent availability of standardized test scores, so it stands to reason that the impact of foreclosures on college students whose parents’ homes have been foreclosed is even less easily measured.

However, Edward Hirt, IU professor of psychological and brain sciences, said the situation can still have an impact on a student even when he is not living in the home.

“If you’re somebody who is actively involved in your family’s life, not being there when stressful things are happening is disconcerting,” he said.

Hirt emphasized that academic performance depends greatly on stability and that the stress, as well as mobility associated with foreclosures, makes an impact on a student no matter his age or proximity to the home.

“(Foreclosure) creates so many distractions,” Hirt said. “You just won’t be able to focus on your schoolwork by any stretch of the imagination in that situation.”