Full Citation

Title: Looking Beyond Test Score Gains: State Accountability's Effect on Educational Attainment and Labor Market Outcomes

Citation Type: Miscellaneous

Publication Year: 2008

ISBN:

ISSN:

DOI:

NSFID:

PMCID:

PMID:

Abstract: Many papers in the literature have attempted to document whether accountability programs have played a role in producing higher test scores. Yet, evaluating changes to test scores does not necessarily indicate how the adoption of programs has affected the individual students long-runoutcomes. This paper extends the existing literature by evaluating whether accountability programs led to higher levels of educational attainment and more successful labor market outcomes. I find evidence of heterogeneous treatment effects across race, ethnicity and gender. While accountability programs led to large improvements in schooling and earnings for Hispanics, the effect for whites and blacks are mixed. Additional specifications that control forthe individuals length of exposure to treatment and the frequency with which states administer standardized exams are also conducted to determine whether treatment variation had any impact on individual outcomes. Both of these additional specifications indicate that accountability programs led to mixed success in improving outcomes for black and white individuals. Due to the mixed results from specific states program characteristics, the conclusions of this studyhighlight the fact that the success of accountability programs is strongly tied to the students response to the programs structure and design.JEL classification: I21, J24, J31Keywords: Accountability programs; socioeconomic status; Education outcomes; Labor market outcomes; Heterogeneous treatment effects.

User Submitted?: No

Authors: Wong, Kathleen N.

Publisher: University of California, Irvine

Data Collections: IPUMS USA

Topics: Education, Race and Ethnicity

Countries: United States