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This paper utilizes highly detailed student-level data to examine whether the initiation of a high-stakes test for accountability purposes affected Florida public schools’ decisions regarding whether to assign students to special education. Using student-level fixed effects models, we find that schools systematically placed students from low socio-economic status backgrounds and historically low-performing students into special education categories that were at the time exempt from the accountability system. High-poverty schools are significantly more likely to reclassify low-achieving students than are more affluent schools. These results provide important implications for the design of school accountability systems.

We use panel data models to examine variations and changes in faculty employment at four-year colleges and universities in the United States. The share of part-time faculty among total faculty has continued to grow during the last two decades, while the share of full-time lecturers and instructors has been relatively stable. Meanwhile, the share of nontenure track faculty among full-time faculty has been growing, especially among the professorial ranks. Dynamic panel data models suggest that employment levels of different types of faculty respond to a variety of economic and institutional factors. Colleges and universities have increasingly employed faculty whose salaries and benefits are relatively inexpensive; the slowly deteriorating financial situations at most colleges and universities have led to an increasing reliance on a contingent academic workforce. A cross-sectional comparison of the share of full-time nontenure track faculty also reveals significant variations across institutions.