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The Central Role of Noise in Evaluating Interventions that Use Test Scores to Rank Schools Author info | Abstract | Publisher info | Download info | Related research | Statistics Kenneth Chay () (University of California, Berkeley - Department of Economics)
Patrick J. McEwan () (Wellesley College, Department of Economics)
Miguel Urquiola () (Columbia University - Department of Economics)
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registered author(s):
Several countries have implemented programs that use test scores to rank schools, and to reward or penalize them based on their students' average performance. Recently, Kane and Staiger (2002) have warned that imprecision in the measurement of school-level test scores could impede these efforts. There is little evidence, however, on how seriously noise hinders the evaluation of the impact of these interventions. We examine these issues in the context of Chile's P-900 program country-wide intervention in which resources were allocated based on cutoffs in schools' mean test scores. We show that transitory noise in average scores and mean reversion lead conventional estimation approaches to greatly overstate the impacts of such programs. We then show how a regression discontinuity design that utilizes the discrete nature of the selection rule can be used to control for reversion biases. While the RD analysis provides convincing evidence that the P-900 program had significant effects on test score gains, these effects are much smaller than is widely believed.
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Paper provided by Columbia University, Department of Economics in its series Discussion Papers with number
0304-10.
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Length: 34 pages
Date of creation: 2003Date of revision:
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References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile , click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.: Andrea Tokman, 2002.
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Kenneth Y. Chay & Patrick J. McEwan & Miguel Urquiola, 2003.
"The Central Role of Noise in Evaluating Interventions that Use Test Scores to Rank Schools ,"
NBER Working Papers
10118, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)
Other versions:
Kenneth Chay & Patrick J. McEwan & Miguel Urquiola, 2003.
"The Central Role of Noise in Evaluating Interventions that Use Test Scores to Rank Schools ,"
Discussion Papers
0304-10, Columbia University, Department of Economics.
[Downloadable!] Kenneth Y. Chay & Patrick J. McEwan & Miguel Urquiola, 2005.
"The Central Role of Noise in Evaluating Interventions that Use Test Scores to Rank Schools ,"
American Economic Review ,
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"The Central Role of Noise in Evaluating Interventions that Use Test Scores to Rank Schools ,"
American Economic Review ,
American Economic Association, vol. 95(4), pages 1237-1258, September.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)
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