Vouchers, Public School Response, and the Role of Incentives: Evidence From Florida

Abstract

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in AbstractThis paper analyzes the incentives and responses of public schools in the context of an educational reform. The literature on the effect of voucher programs on public schools typically focuses on student and mean school scores. This paper tries to go inside the black box to investigate some of the ways in which schools facing the Florida voucher program behaved. The program embedded vouchers in an accountability regime. Schools getting an "F" grade for the first time were exposed to the threat of vouchers, but did not face vouchers unless and until they got a second "F" within the next three years. In addition, "F," being the lowest grade, exposed the threatened schools to stigma. Exploiting the institutional details of this program, I analyze the incentives built into the system and investigate the behavior of the threatened public schools facing these incentives. There is strong evidence that they did respond to incentives. Using highly disaggregated school-level data, a difference-in-differences estimation strategy, and a regression discontinuity analysis, I find that the threatened schools tended to focus more on students below the minimum criteria cutoffs rather than reading and math. These results are robust to controlling for differential preprogram trends, changes in demographic compositions, mean reversion, and sorting. The findings have important policy implications.

Feeling the Florida Heat? How Low-Performing Schools Respond to Voucher and Accountability Pressure

“…For example, there is some evidence that schools respond to accountability pressure by differentially reclassifying low-achieving students as learning disabled so that their scores will not count against the school in accountability systems (see, e.g., 1 Recent nationwide studies by Carnoy and Loeb (2002) and Hanushek and Raymond (2005) find significant improvement in student outcomes as a result of standards-based accountability, whereas the results from some specific state systems have been less positive (see, e.g, Koretz and Barron (1998), Clark (2003) and Haney (2000Haney ( , 2002). More recent work by Figlio and Rouse (2006), West and Peterson (2006), and Chakrabarti (2006) find positive short-run effects of accountability on Florida student outcomes, at least in mathematics. The evidence on marketbased reforms is also mixed (see, e.g., Howell and Peterson (2002), Krueger and Pei (2004), and Rouse (1998) for evidence from voucher programs).…”

“…At the same time, an increasing number of schools were receiving "A"s and "B"s. This is partly due to the fact that schools had learned their way around the system: a school had to fail in all three subjects to earn an "F" grade so as long as students did well enough in at least one subject the school would escape the worst stigma. Goldhaber and Hannaway (2004) and Chakrabarti (2006) find evidence that students in failing schools made the biggest gains in writing, which is viewed as one of the easier subjects in which to show improvement quickly. When the rules of the game changed, so did the number of schools caught by surprise.…”

School Vouchers: A Survey of the Economics Literature

“…In short, the program may confound the effects of vouchers with those of accountability. Chakrabarti (2013aChakrabarti ( , 2013d continues the study of the FOSP program. Using difference-in-differences and regression discontinuity designs, Chakrabarti (2013a) provides evidence that schools receiving one F focused resources on improving the scores of students predicted to be near the boundary of the threshold of failure, and on preparing for the writing exam, where performance is believed to be more easily improved.…”

Under Pressure: Job Security, Resource Allocation, and Productivity in Schools Under NCLB

“…Most empirical research on school accountability focuses on the impacts of state and local systems, many of which preceded No Child Left Behind (e.g., Ladd & Zelli, 2002;Hanushek & Raymond, 2005;Chakrabarti, 2007;Rouse et al, 2007;Chiang, 2009;Rockoff & Turner, 2010). Several studies find evidence that accountability pressure causes schools to reallocate resources in ways that raise average student achievement.…”