| Louisiana's school accountability system places a disproportionately high weight on tests given in the 4th and 8th grades, known as LEAP tests. Thus, schools have more incentive to engage in activities that raise test scores but don't contribute to lasting learning in 4th and 8th grade than other grades. I develop a model that predicts that schools facing more severe sanctions will respond to this incentive more strongly than other schools. To examine this prediction, I study two 3rd--5th grade cohorts, with the students in both cohorts starting 3rd grade at the beginning of Louisiana's school accountability system. Specifically, in Chapter 2, I employ a Regression Discontinuity (RD) design at two key thresholds of Louisiana's accountability system, in which schools above these thresholds are under less pressure than those below. In order to look at the whole distribution of schools, Chapter 3 studies four distinct categories of schools, in which schools in lower categories face more pressure than other schools. In both chapters, the results suggest that schools initially under more pressure in Louisiana's school accountability system engaged to a larger extent in activities that increased 4th grade LEAP scores but didn't contribute to lasting learning. The model ascribes this effect largely to gaming, though also to students being worked harder in a way that elevated their performance temporarily but didn't last. |
