The effect of teacher strikes on academic achievement: Evidence from Colombia

International literature on the effects of teacher strikes on academic performance is scarce. Colombia offers a unique opportunity to study these effects given the high frequency of stoppages and the availability of high-quality data. Exploiting the exogenous variations of teacher strikes at school, municipality and department level, we find that those students who have been exposed to more and longer strikes obtain on average, lower scores in math and reading. We also find that students who were exposed to more strikes during secondary school score on average 41 % and 29 % of a SD lower in math and reading, respectively.