Steven G. Rivkin

English

Research Papers in Economics

Discussion
Steven G. Rivkin
also be related to other determinants of earnings,
including family income and wealth, in which case
the observed return to mathematics knowledge
could conflate the actual return and related advan-
tages of growing up in a higher-income family. Alter-
natively, evidence on the returns to mathematics
skills, such as the returns depicted in Figure 1, may
understate the true return by assuming that the
increase in one’s earnings is constant in percentage
terms throughout one’s career. Most studies use
samples of younger workers early in their careers,
and those with higher mathematics skills may be
“investing” more in the sense of foregoing current
earnings to obtain additional skills that will increase
future earnings. Yet despite these and other con-
cerns, the weight of the evidence points to a strong
economic payoff to raising mathematics knowledge,
meaning that the benefits of accountability reforms
depend on their effects on school quality.
Accountability systems adopted prior to NCLB
facilitate the study of accountability effects. The
authors point out the substantial variation in pro-
gram structure and emphasize the importance of
design details, including the type and severity of
sanctions, generosity of rewards, and method for
estimating school and teacher effects. Long-run
success of accountability systems depends on a
consensus of belief that teacher and school evalu-
ations and rankings are based on actual quality and
not on the skills that students bring to the class-
room. Proper assessment requires the development
of comprehensive data systems that can also be
used in the study of state education systems more
broadly. Not only would flawed assessment fail to
T
he passage of the No Child Left Behind
Act (NCLB) represents a major shift in
the federal role in elementary and sec-
ondary education. Whether it succeeds
in raising academic achievement and improving
subsequent economic and social outcomes remains
to be seen. As Hanushek and Raymond point out,
the recent, nationwide implementation of NCLB
makes it very difficult to identify the impacts of
the reform. This difficulty led them to use existing
evidence to predict the likely effects of the law.
A sensible approach. Of course, the predictive
power of the existing evidence depends on both
the strength of that evidence and its relevance to
the accountability reforms mandated by NCLB.
The paper begins by documenting the growing
body of evidence showing that mathematics
achievement raises earnings and economic growth,
both directly and indirectly, by increasing educa-
tional attainment. The evidence indicates that
school quality improvements could have substantial
economic benefits and affect both average earnings
and the degree of inequality. Therefore education
reforms could have a large economic payoff.
Questions do remain about the overall magni-
tude of the effects and the impact of school quality
improvements on the earnings distribution. If those
who have a higher expected return to learning
mathematics tend to receive better instruction or put
forth higher effort, returns based on earnings dif-
ferences may understate the value of mathematics
knowledge for some (engineers, for example) and
overstate the value for others (writers or laborers,
for example). Higher mathematics achievement may
Steven G. Rivkin is an associate professor of economics at Amherst College.
Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Regional Economic Development, 2006, 2(1), pp. 62-63.
© 2006, The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. Articles may be reprinted, reproduced, published, distributed, displayed, and transmitted in
their entirety if copyright notice, author name(s), and full citation are included. Abstracts, synopses, and other derivative works may be made
only with prior written permission of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
62 VOLUME 2, NUMBER 1 2006 FEDERAL RESERVE BANK OF ST. LOUIS REGIONAL ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENTreward or sanction based on true quality, it would
discourage high-quality teachers and administrators
from remaining in and entering public education.
Hanushek and Raymond argue that variation
in the timing and structure of state accountability
systems adopted prior to the passage of NCLB can
be used to estimate the effects of reforms that are
similar in many respects to NCLB. Complications
arise because differences in the timing and extent
of reforms may be related to other factors that affect
achievement, making it difficult to isolate the
accountability effects. For example, states may
implement a number of reforms in response to
low performance or changes in the political climate.
These include alignment of the curriculum more
closely to the type of material covered on the
National Assessment of Educational Progress
(NAEP) examination, the test used in this and other
papers. Consequently, observed changes in test
scores could result from a number of factors, neces-
sitating the identification of a comparison group
that would provide a benchmark of achievement
changes not resulting directly from the newly
adopted accountability system. States yet to adopt
accountability systems are good candidates, but
they may fail to capture other systematic changes
experienced by the accountability adopters.
The results suggest that high-stakes accounta-
bility systems raise achievement, but there is reason
to interpret the findings with some caution due to
the variation in program characteristics—the pos-
sibility that other factors are contaminating the
results—and to the pattern of the results. Specifi-
cally, given that state tests tended to focus on less-
advanced skills, improvements in schools serving
poor and minority students with lower initial scores
would be more likely to be captured on the tests.
Moreover, one might expect the introduction of
high-stakes examinations to have a larger impact
on schools serving predominantly minority and
lower-income students whose families likely placed
less pressure on school administrators to raise
quality than did families of middle and upper class
students who can more easily opt out of under-
performing schools by switching to the private
sector or moving to a different community.
Additional concerns revolve around the ques-
tion of the size of the effects on longer-run out-
comes, including academic attainment, earnings,
and economic growth. The fact that the NAEP data
is not the assessment used in the accountability
programs certainly mitigates the likelihood that
test score increases do not carry over to longer-run
outcomes or even other tests in the same subjects.
Nonetheless, reports of extensive time devoted to
test-taking instruction and additional emphasis
on the test material vis à vis other subjects high-
lights the importance of structuring the incentives
correctly.
Finally, although frustration with resource-
based policies has been a catalyst for the growing
demand for accountability and other incentive
programs, expanded resources and more-rigorous
incentives are not mutually exclusive tools for
improving the schools. In fact, one measure of the
success of accountability efforts is the extent to
which these reforms increase the return to financial
investments in the public schools.
Rivkin
FEDERAL RESERVE BANK OF ST. LOUIS REGIONAL ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT VOLUME 2, NUMBER 1  2006 63

School accountability and student performance - discussion

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School accountability and student performance - discussion

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