IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/ecoedu/v27y2008i1p58-68.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Strategic responses to school accountability measures: It's all in the timing

Author

Listed:
  • Sims, David P.

Abstract

The adoption of state accountability testing in the 1990s coincided with the movement of some school start dates from September into August. Using data from Wisconsin, this paper connects these phenomena, showing that some low-scoring districts advanced their school start dates to allow their students more time to prepare for exams. I use a 2001 Wisconsin state law that restricted districts to start dates after September 1st to identify the effects of this extra time on student achievement. Extra classroom days are associated with small increases in Math scores for 4th graders, but not average reading or language scores. Extra classroom time may also have increased third grade reading scores for students in the upper portion of the ability distribution.

Suggested Citation

  • Sims, David P., 2008. "Strategic responses to school accountability measures: It's all in the timing," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 27(1), pages 58-68, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:ecoedu:v:27:y:2008:i:1:p:58-68
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0272-7757(06)00137-3
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Alan B. Krueger, 1999. "Experimental Estimates of Education Production Functions," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 114(2), pages 497-532.
    2. Eide, Eric & Showalter, Mark H., 1998. "The effect of school quality on student performance: A quantile regression approach," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 58(3), pages 345-350, March.
    3. repec:bla:econom:v:68:y:2001:i:272:p:465-88 is not listed on IDEAS
    4. Brian A. Jacob & Steven D. Levitt, 2003. "Rotten Apples: An Investigation of the Prevalence and Predictors of Teacher Cheating," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 118(3), pages 843-877.
    5. Richards, Craig E. & Sheu, Tian Ming, 1992. "The South Carolina school incentive reward program: A policy analysis," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 11(1), pages 71-86, March.
    6. Card, David & Krueger, Alan B, 1992. "Does School Quality Matter? Returns to Education and the Characteristics of Public Schools in the United States," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 100(1), pages 1-40, February.
    7. Jörn-Steffen Pischke, 2007. "The Impact of Length of the School Year on Student Performance and Earnings: Evidence From the German Short School Years," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 117(523), pages 1216-1242, October.
    8. Ladd, Helen F., 1999. "The Dallas school accountability and incentive program: an evaluation of its impacts on student outcomes," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 18(1), pages 1-16, February.
    9. Grogger, Jeff, 1996. "Does School Quality Explain the Recent Black/White Wage Trend?," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 14(2), pages 231-253, April.
    10. Joshua D. Angrist & Victor Lavy, 1999. "Using Maimonides' Rule to Estimate the Effect of Class Size on Scholastic Achievement," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 114(2), pages 533-575.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Barrios-Fernández, Andrés & Bovini, Giulia, 2021. "It’s time to learn: School institutions and returns to instruction time," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 80(C).
    2. Corak, Miles & Lauzon, Darren, 2009. "Differences in the distribution of high school achievement: The role of class-size and time-in-term," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 28(2), pages 189-198, April.
    3. Thompson, Paul N., 2021. "Is four less than five? Effects of four-day school weeks on student achievement in Oregon," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 193(C).
    4. Lavy, Victor, 2012. "Expanding School Resources and Increasing Time on Task: Effects of a Policy Experiment in Israel on Student Academic Achievement and Behaviour," CAGE Online Working Paper Series 95, Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE).
    5. Aucejo, Esteban M. & Romano, Teresa Foy, 2016. "Assessing the effect of school days and absences on test score performance," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 70-87.
    6. Eric R. Eide & Mark H. Showalter & David P. Sims, 2002. "The Effects Of Secondary School Quality On The Distribution Of Earnings," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 20(2), pages 160-170, April.
    7. Brian A. Jacob & Lars Lefgren, 2004. "The Impact of Teacher Training on Student Achievement: Quasi-Experimental Evidence from School Reform Efforts in Chicago," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 39(1).
    8. Ismael Sanz & J .D. Tenaa, 2020. "A Natural Experiment on the Effect of Instruction Time and Quality: Lessons for the Covid-19 Outbreak," Working Papers 202032, University of Liverpool, Department of Economics.
    9. Marcotte, Dave E., 2007. "Schooling and test scores: A mother-natural experiment," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 26(5), pages 629-640, October.
    10. Bingley, Paul & Heinesen, Eskil & Krassel, Karl Fritjof & Kristensen, Nicolai, 2018. "The Timing of Instruction Time: Accumulated Hours, Timing and Pupil Achievement," IZA Discussion Papers 11807, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    11. Parinduri, Rasyad A., 2014. "Do children spend too much time in schools? Evidence from a longer school year in Indonesia," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 89-104.
    12. Goulas, Sofoklis & Megalokonomou, Rigissa, 2016. "Swine Flu and The Effect of Compulsory Class Attendance on Academic Performance," MPRA Paper 75395, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    13. Lisa Barrow & Cecilia Elena Rouse, 2005. "Causality, causality, causality: the view of education inputs and outputs from economics," Working Paper Series WP-05-15, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.
    14. Corak, Miles & Lauzon, Darren, 2009. "Differences in the distribution of high school achievement: The role of class-size and time-in-term," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 28(2), pages 189-198, April.
    15. Lauzon, Darren & Corak, Miles, 2005. "Differences entre les distributions du rendement scolaire au secondaire : le role de la taille de la classe et du temps d'enseignement," Direction des études analytiques : documents de recherche 2005270f, Statistics Canada, Direction des études analytiques.
    16. Ma, Lingjie & Koenker, Roger, 2006. "Quantile regression methods for recursive structural equation models," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 134(2), pages 471-506, October.
    17. Barrow, Lisa & Rouse, Cecilia Elena, 2004. "Using market valuation to assess public school spending," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 88(9-10), pages 1747-1769, August.
    18. Giacomo De Giorgi & Michele Pellizzari & William Gui Woolston, 2012. "Class Size And Class Heterogeneity," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 10(4), pages 795-830, August.
    19. Justin L. Tobias & Mingliang Li, 2003. "A finite-sample hierarchical analysis of wage variation across public high schools: evidence from the NLSY and high school and beyond," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 18(3), pages 315-336.
    20. Gilpin, Gregory A., 2012. "Teacher salaries and teacher aptitude: An analysis using quantile regressions," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 31(3), pages 15-29.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:ecoedu:v:27:y:2008:i:1:p:58-68. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/econedurev .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.