Volatility in School Test Scores: Implications for Test-Based Accountability Systems

Abstract

By the spring of 2000, forty states had begun using student test scores to rate school performance. Twenty states have gone a step further and are attaching explicit monetary rewards or sanctions to a school's test performance. For example, California planned to spend $677 million on teacher incentives in 2001, providing bonuses of up to $25,000 to teachers in schools with the largest test score gains. We highlight an underappreciated weakness of school accountability systems--the volatility of test score measures--and explore the implications of that volatility for the design of school accountability systems.