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Tinkering Toward Accolades: School Gaming under a Performance Accountability System

Improving School Accountability

ISBN: 978-0-76231-351-8, eISBN: 978-1-84950-446-1

Publication date: 25 August 2006

Abstract

We explore the extent to which schools manipulate the composition of students in the test-taking pool in order to maximize ratings under Texas’ accountability system in the 1990s. We first derive predictions from a static model of administrators’ incentives given the structure of the ratings criteria, and then test these predictions by comparing differential changes in exemption rates across student subgroups within campuses and across campuses and regimes. Our analyses uncover evidence of a moderate degree of strategic behavior, so that there is some tension between designing systems that account for heterogeneity in student populations and that are manipulation-free.

Citation

Berry Cullen, J. and Reback, R. (2006), "Tinkering Toward Accolades: School Gaming under a Performance Accountability System", Gronberg, T.J. and Jansen, D.W. (Ed.) Improving School Accountability (Advances in Applied Microeconomics, Vol. 14), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 1-34. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0278-0984(06)14001-8

Publisher

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Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2006, Emerald Group Publishing Limited