The Dynamic Effects of Educational Accountability

Hugh Macartney

No 12-09, Working Papers from Duke University, Department of Economics

Abstract: Recent education accountability reforms feature school-level performance targets that condition on prior scores to account for student heterogeneity. Yet doing so introduces potential dynamic distortions to incentives: teachers may be less responsive to the reform today to avoid more onerous future targets--an instance of the so-called `ratchet effect.' Guided by a dynamic model and utilizing rich educational panel data from North Carolina, I exploit school grade span variation to identify any dynamic gaming, finding compelling evidence of ratchet effects. I then directly estimate the structural parameters of the corresponding model, uncovering complementarities between teacher effort and student ability.

Keywords: Public; Education; Personnel; Dynamic Gaming; Dynamic Incentives; Ratchet Eff ects; Education Production; Educational Accountability (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D82 I21 J24 J33 M52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 72
Date: 2012
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu, nep-hrm, nep-lab and nep-ure
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