School Accountability Policies Research Articles

The Effects of School Accountability on Teachers in Public and Private Schools: Evidence from Chile

Abstract This paper estimates the effects of a school accountability policy on year-to-year teacher mobility in publicly and privately managed low-performing schools in Chile. As school ranking depends on the institution's relative position according to a set of variables and their corresponding thresholds, we use a multivariate regression discontinuity design to evaluate the impact of the policy on teacher mobility. Our findings reveal that teachers are generally more likely to leave low-performing schools, although this result varies by type of management. Teachers in public schools tend to transfer to other schools within the system, and those who do so are more likely to be working in two or more schools. Meanwhile, teachers in private schools are comparatively more likely to exit the system altogether, with mobility concentrated among low-productivity teachers. Despite these differences, the introduction of accountability did not induce new hires at either type of school.

Are Schools Deemed Effective Based on Overall Student Growth Also Closing Achievement Gaps? Examining the Black–White Gap by School

Background/Context: Closing achievement gaps is a major concern in U.S. education. These gaps can develop in a wide range of ways over the course of a student’s schooling. Yet, research on school effectiveness and accountability policies for schools often focuses on rank orderings of schools based on value-added models, which could mask those complex gap trends altogether. Purpose: In this study, schools’ contributions to student growth were estimated for Black versus White students such that some of the complex trends in how gaps develop can be disaggregated. Research questions were the following: (1) How different are the rank orderings of schools for Black versus White students? (2) Does relying on rank ordering alone mask any differences in how schools contribute to achievement gaps, including whether or not schools are (a) closing gaps, (b) preparing students for college differentially by race, and (c) generating comparable growth for White and Black students? Sample: Students in the sample, who ranged from roughly 92,000 to 139,000 in number depending on the year, all took a vertically scaled achievement test in math/reading and were followed longitudinally. Research Design: Rather than simply fit lag score models common in the value-added literature, growth curve models were estimated in a multilevel modeling framework. Conclusion: Results show that focusing on rank orderings of schools alone can mask troubling trends in relative achievement over time, including masking differential rates of progress toward college readiness for minoritized students.

The Signaling Power of Unexcused Absence from School

State and national school accountability policies situate preventing chronic absenteeism on par with meeting state standardized test benchmarks. We question relying on school attendance as both a component of accountability policies and a means of enhancing equity in schools. Our research suggests out-of-school factors unrelated to missed instruction account for most of the associations between absences and test score achievement—with unexcused absences driving those associations. Excessive absences—and particularly unexcused absences—don’t harm students mainly through missed instruction. Instead, they reflect out-of-school harms students endure that have produced inequalities for years—and will continue to do so even if students show up or parents call in.

The Special School as ‘Natural Habitat’? On the Persistence of Segregated Education of Students With Intellectual Disabilities

In this essay, I explore the reasons behind the persistence of segregated education of students with intellectual disabilities in Austria. Doing so, I critically interrogate three phases of the Austrian education system concerning the role of students with intellectual disabilities: (1) The rapid expansion of special schools in the 1960s and 1970s, (2) the rise of integrated education in the 1980s and 1990s and (3) the last two decades, which were characterized by budget cuts, school accountability policies and failed efforts to further the implementation of inclusive education.

Política de responsabilização escolar (accountability school) e formação de professor: cenários e atores na avaliação educacional brasileira

The accountability policy instrument is the large-scale assessments applied by national, state and municipal managers. This study aims to conduct a discussion on academic teacher education and school accountability policy (accountability school) developed in Brazil, observing its applicability in the educational evaluation policy. We carry out a bibliographic and documentary approach, based on the thinking of scholars: Bonamino and Sousa (2012), Brooke (2006), Horta Neto (2010), Hoffmann (2005), Dias Sobrinho (2003), Pontual (2008) among others. The study showed that in Brazil there are three types of educational evaluation policy; a diagnosis that has no implications for the school and the curriculum; another of bland accountability (low stakes) which has symbolic consequences for the school and its actors and the third classified as strong accountability (high stakes) causing inferences with the school and its actors.

The ethics of competition: accountability policy enactment in Chilean schools’ everyday life

ABSTRACTPublic policies have a moral order, an ethical horizon. They offer a vocabulary of imagined micro-policies. Using the case of Chile, this paper examines the ways in which accountability policies are reworked within schools and how they affect actors’ subjectivities. It adds new findings to the existing body of research on school accountability policies, offering in-depth evidence based on the case of Chile, which has a high-stakes testing model and a widespread competitive voucher system. The research is based on case studies of ten public and private subsidised schools, framed by a sociological perspective of policy enactment theory. The research findings show the ways that accountability policies are recreated, expanded, and intensified at the local level, permeating an ethic of competition. The analysis focuses on three qualitative trends: school actors’ sense-making of test scores and labels; zones of safety and risk for teachers under an accountability regime; and the emergence of a sticky web of persuasion, surveillance, and coercion among school members in order to improve performance. The practices examined are not understood as ‘secondary effects’ or an ‘implementation problem’, as if they occur unconnected from the policy rationale. The outcomes are consistent with the policy itself in interaction with school life.

A litmus test of school accountability policy effects in Korea: cross-validating high-stakes test results for academic excellence and equity

ABSTRACTThis study challenges prior evidence on the impact of Korea’s high-stakes school accountability policy as a tool to improve overall achievement and close achievement gaps. Applying difference-in-differences method, the study compares Korean high school students’ reading and math test score trends before and after the policy based on the National Assessment of Educational Achievement (NAEA) vs the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). Under the “No Student Below Basic” policy, achievement gains were only evident on NAEA as high-stakes test but not on PISA as low-stake test that emphasizes real-world applications. The achievement gaps between high-performing and low-performing schools narrowed on NAEA but widened on PISA. Through cross-national comparison with the US “No Child Left Behind” policy features and outcomes, the study offers critical insights on the risks of test score inflations and educational limitations under high-stakes school accountability policy by which test results may become neither transferrable nor sustainable.

Do Environmental Shocks and Budgetary Constraints on Public Organizations Increase Employee Turnover?

Previous public management and organizational theory literature focuses primarily on the employee- and organizational-level characteristics that influence employee turnover. However, other potential determinants of employee turnover, such as factors external to the organization, are understudied. the current paper addresses this gap in the literature by examining the effect of the interaction between environmental shocks and budgetary constraints on employee turnover. Using a nationally representative teacher-level dataset, this paper tests the hypothesis that, after the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), teachers in states with binding tax and expenditure limitations (TELs) on school districts become more likely to turnover than their counterparts in other states. This paper finds evidence to support this hypothesis. Following the passage of NCLB, a teacher in a state with a binding TEL is 8.7 percentage points more likely to leave the teaching profession relative to all other teachers. This result is primarily driven by those teachers in states without a prior school accountability policy. Overall, this study adds to prior research on public employee turnover, TELs, and school accountability.

Relations between accountability and improvement strategies in New York City’s Children First Networks

Federal school accountability policies like No Child Left Behind were based on a logic that measuring school performance and making the results public through tools like school report cards would incentivize educators to create strategies for improving school quality. Yet, most schools needed more than incentives to be able to design improvement strategies that would lead to all students becoming proficient in standard subjects like math and ELA. As a result, states and school districts implemented an infrastructure of supports. To date, there is little research that considers how support providers use accountability tools to diagnose problems and design targeted improvement strategies. Without better knowledge of how schools and providers commit to particular improvement strategies, it is difficult to determine whether we need better school report cards or strategies, or both to improve school quality. This study aims to address this gap by examining how four Children First Networks in New York City used accountability metrics to develop targeted improvement strategies, which led to distinctly different improvement strategies. The article closes with implications for policy.

Does School Accountability Reduce Inequality in Education? Lessons from South Korea

This study takes note of changes in school accountability policies from 2009 to 2015 in Korea utilizing OECD PISA data from 2006 to 2015. We found that active implementation of the accountability policy (2009-2012 period) were effective in raising the academic performance of students and schools in the lowest socioeconomic strata. However, when the school accountability policies were gradually abolished (2012-2015), education achievements of students from poor family background as well as the overall performance of low achieving public schools worsened significantly. We particularly noted that it was only public schools that experienced gains and exacerbations in school performance in accordance with the status of accountability policy, conversely, private schools somewhat gained from the implementation of the policy and resisted negative consequences following the gradual abolishment of the policy.

Accountability Policies at Schools: A Study of Path Analysis

Turkey is now on its way to reforming compulsory education and having a more effective and efficient education system by creating more accountable schools. This research has been designed in a causative pattern to discover the effects of external academic performance pressures on school accountability policies and school accountability responses based on quantitative data obtained both from teachers and school administrators. First, account-giving behaviors related to teaching activities among school teachers and administrators directed at themselves and created by academic performance pressures coming from school shareholders, the local socio-environment, and upper bureaucracy respectively were discovered. Second, academic performance pressures from school shareholders create more support for schools’ policy on market accountability, whereas bureaucratic performance pressures create resistance to the policy on performance accountability. Third, those who favor obeying the rules for teaching are more inclined to give an account of their deeds to the upper bureaucracy.

The barking dog that bites: Test score volatility and school rankings in Punjab, Pakistan

This paper is the first to explore the implications of test score volatility for school accountability policies in a lower-middle-income country. Using two new datasets from the province of Punjab, Pakistan, we find that rankings based on school-level averages of students’ test scores fluctuate considerably from one year to the next due to factors unrelated to school quality. First, most variation in test scores is within, not between schools, allowing noise to play a large part in determining school rankings. Second, variation in school test scores is partially attributable to fluctuations in the characteristics of student cohorts. Third, an even larger share is explained by one-time shocks. Fourth, these problems are more pronounced in small schools. As a result, rankings that rely on test score levels or changes often fail to identify top-performing or rapidly-improving schools, since they are influenced by factors beyond schools’ control.

SCHOOL ACCOUNTABILITY AND SCHOOL CHOICE: EFFECTS ON STUDENT SELECTION ACROSS SCHOOLS

This paper examines the effect of the introduction of school accountability policies in Florida on schools' student body composition. We specifically examine the effects of the state issuing official school "grades" on the composition of incoming kindergarten classes, using novel data on families' socioeconomic characteristics drawn from birth records. High socioeconomic status parents were particularly responsive to the introduction of grades. Schools that received A grades saw significant increases in an index measure of socioeconomic status among their kindergarten students after enactment of the policy. We find some evidence that responses are stronger for A schools that have nearby alternatives, and where nearby alternatives are poorer-performing schools.

School Segregation in the Era of Accountability

Although a great deal of research has examined the impact of accountability on a number of different outcomes, particularly achievement, little research to date has assessed the impact of school accountability reform on racial segregation in schools. Using school, district, and state-level data from the Common Core of Data from 1987 to 2010 and data on school accountability from other sources, we examine black-white within-district segregation before and after the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) in 2002. We find that NCLB was associated with significant increases in black-white segregation within school districts, even after controlling for other factors that might have led to increased segregation (e.g., release from court-ordered segregation, recent Supreme Court decisions). This effect was especially pronounced among districts in states that had implemented school accountability policies prior to NCLB. Our results lead us to conclude that policymakers must also consider the negative unintended consequences of education reform policies, even those designed to have an ameliorative impact on inequality.

Public Information, Public Learning, and Public Opinion: Democratic Accountability in Education Policy

Theories of political accountability rest on the assumption that citizens use information about the performance of government to hold public officials accountable, but citizens’ utilization of such information is difficult to directly examine. We take advantage of the importance of citizen-driven, performance based accountability for education policy in Tennessee to conduct a survey experiment that identifies the effect of new information, mistaken beliefs, and differing considerations on the evaluation of public officials and policy reforms using 1,500 Tennesseans. We show that despite an emphasis on reporting outcomes for school accountability policies in the state, mistaken beliefs are prevalent and produce overly optimistic assessments of the institutions responsible for statewide education policy. However, individuals’ update their assessments of these institutions in an unbiased way when provided with objective performance data. Finally, support for specific policies intended to improve performance is unchanged by the information and more dependent on existing ideological commitments.

Public information, public learning and public opinion: democratic accountability in education policy

AbstractTheories of political accountability assume citizens use information about the performance of government to hold public officials accountable, but whether citizens actually use information is difficult to directly examine. We take advantage of the importance of citizen-driven, performance-based accountability for education policy in Tennessee to conduct a survey experiment that identifies the effect of new information, mistaken beliefs and differing considerations on the evaluation of public officials and policy reforms using 1,500 Tennesseans. Despite an emphasis on reporting outcomes for school accountability policies in the state, mistaken beliefs are prevalent and produce overly optimistic assessments of the institutions responsible for statewide education policy. Moreover, individuals update their assessments of these institutions in an unbiased way when provided with objective performance data about overall student performance. Providing additional information about race-related performance differences does not alter this relationship, however. Finally, support for specific policies that are intended to improve student performance is unchanged by either type of performance information; opinions about policy reforms are instead most related to race and existing partisan commitments.

Accountability escolar: um estudo exploratório do perfil das escolas premiadas

O artigo investiga o perfil das escolas que foram premiadas por um dos programas que compõem a política de accountability escolar, recentemente adotada pela Secretaria Municipal de Educação (SME) do Rio de Janeiro. Discute-se uma bibliografia que sinaliza como desenhos de políticas de responsabilização podem emitir diferentes sinais para atores escolares e descreve-se, brevemente, a política de responsabilização escolar da SME do Rio de Janeiro. As análises utilizaram bases dos dados da SME do Rio de Janeiro e dos questionários contextuais da Prova Brasil, sendo identificadas algumas limitações do programa em premiar o esforço dos atores escolares. Nas considerações finais, são pontuadas algumas alterações na regulamentação que buscam corrigir alguns dos sinais/incentivos emitidos pelo programa foco do estudo.

Unintended Consequences of School Accountability Policies: Evidence from Florida and Implications for New York

Over the past two decades, state and federal education policies have tried to hold schools more accountable for educating students by tying rewards and sanctions to test scores and other measurable outcomes. A common criticism of these policies is that they may induce schools to game the system along with — or instead of — making genuine educational improvements. One such strategic response may be to classify low-performing students into categories that are from grade computation in an effort to artificially inflate scores. This article analyzes school responses to an influential accountability-tied voucher program in Florida. The authors find evidence of increased classification into excluded categories in failing schools following the program’s inception. Their findings have important implications for New York City’s Progress Reports program and New York’s implementation of the federal No Child Left Behind Act. While these policies were modeled after the Florida program, they contain important design differences that are likely to discourage this type of gaming, although they may encourage other strategic classifications.

The Effects of NCLB on School Resources and Practices

A number of studies have examined the impact of school accountability policies, including No Child Left Behind (NCLB), on student achievement. However, there is relatively little evidence on how school accountability reforms and NCLB, in particular, have influenced education policies and practices. This study examines the effects of NCLB on multiple district, school, and teacher traits using district-year financial data and pooled cross sections of teacher and principal surveys. Our results indicate that NCLB increased per-pupil spending by nearly $600, which was funded primarily through increased state and local revenue. We find that NCLB increased teacher compensation and the share of elementary school teachers with advanced degrees but had no effects on class size. We also find that NCLB did not influence overall instructional time in core academic subjects but did lead schools to reallocate time away from science and social studies and toward the tested subject of reading.

The impact of no Child Left Behind on student achievement

AbstractThe No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act compelled states to design school accountability systems based on annual student assessments. The effect of this federal legislation on the distribution of student achievement is a highly controversial but centrally important question. This study presents evidence on whether NCLB has influenced student achievement based on an analysis of state‐level panel data on student test scores from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). The impact of NCLB is identified using a comparative interrupted time series analysis that relies on comparisons of the test‐score changes across states that already had school accountability policies in place prior to NCLB and those that did not. Our results indicate that NCLB generated statistically significant increases in the average math performance of fourth graders (effect size 5 0.23 by 2007) as well as improvements at the lower and top percentiles. There is also evidence of improvements in eighth‐grade math achievement, particularly among traditionally low‐achieving groups and at the lower percentiles. However, we find no evidence that NCLB increased fourth‐grade reading achievement. © 2011 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.