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Vouchers, Public School Response and the Role of Incentives: Evidence from Florida

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Author Info
Rajashri Chakrabarti (Harvard University)

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Abstract

In this paper, I analyze the behavior of public schools facing vouchers. The literature on the effect of voucher programs on public schools typically focuses on student and mean school scores. This paper tries to go inside the black box to investigate some of the ways in which schools facing the threat of vouchers in Florida behaved. Florida schools getting an 'F' grade are exposed to the threat of vouchers, while vouchers are implemented if they get another 'F' grade in the next three years. Exploiting the institutional details of the 1999 program, I analyze the incentives built into the system and investigate whether the threatened public schools behaved strategically to respond to incentives. There is strong evidence that they did respond to incentives. Using highly disaggregated school level data, a difference- in-differences estimation strategy as well as a regression discontinuity analysis, I find that the threatened schools tended to focus more on students below the minimum criteria cutoffs rather than equally on all, but interestingly, this improvement did not come at the expense of higher performing students. Second, consistent with incentives, they focused mostly on writing rather than reading and math. Finally, consistent with substantial costs associated with such reclassification during that period, there is not much evidence of relative reclassification of low performing students in to special education categories exempt from the calculation of grades. These results are robust to controlling for differential pre-program trends, changes in demographic compositions, mean reversion and sorting. These findings have important policy implications and subsequent grading rule changes in Florida suggest that these policy changes have been a response to public school behavior.

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Publisher Info
Paper provided by EconWPA in its series Public Economics with number 0512002.

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Length: 56 pages
Date of creation: 02 Dec 2005
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Handle: RePEc:wpa:wuwppe:0512002

Note: Type of Document - pdf; pages: 56
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Web page: http://129.3.20.41

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Related research
Keywords: Vouchers; Incentives; Strategic Behavior; Regression Discontinuity; Mean Reversion;

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Find related papers by JEL classification:
H4 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods
I21 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Analysis of Education
I28 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Government Policy

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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.:
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  6. 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:
  7. Randall Reback, 2006. "Teaching to the Rating: School Accountability and the Distribution of Student Achievement," Working Papers 0602, Barnard College, Department of Economics. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  8. Figlio, David N. & Rouse, Cecilia Elena, 2006. "Do accountability and voucher threats improve low-performing schools?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(1-2), pages 239-255, January. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
    Other versions:
  9. Rajashri Chakrabarti, 2004. "Impact of Voucher Design on Public School Performance: Evidence from Florida and Milwaukee Voucher Programs," Econometric Society 2004 North American Summer Meetings 221, Econometric Society. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  10. Randall Reback & Julie Berry Cullen, 2006. "Tinkering toward accolades: School gaming under a performance accountability system," Working Papers 0601, Barnard College, Department of Economics. [Downloadable!]
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  11. Holmstrom, Bengt & Milgrom, Paul, 1991. "Multitask Principal-Agent Analyses: Incentive Contracts, Asset Ownership, and Job Design," Journal of Law, Economics and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 7(0), pages 24-52, Special I.
  12. Figlio, David N., 2006. "Testing, crime and punishment," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(4-5), pages 837-851, May. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  13. Rajashri Chakrabarti, 2005. "Can Increasing Private School Participation and Monetary Loss in a Voucher Program Affect Public School Performance? Evidence from Milwaukee," Public Economics 0512003, EconWPA. [Downloadable!]
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  14. Figlio, David N. & Winicki, Joshua, 2005. "Food for thought: the effects of school accountability plans on school nutrition," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 89(2-3), pages 381-394, February. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
    Other versions:
  15. Caroline Minter Hoxby, 2003. "School Choice and School Productivity. Could School Choice Be a Tide that Lifts All Boats?," NBER Chapters, in: The Economics of School Choice, pages 287-342 National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!]
  16. Martin R. West & Paul E. Peterson, 2006. "The Efficacy of Choice Threats Within School Accountability Systems: Results from Legislatively Induced Experiments," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 116(510), pages C46-C62, 03. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  17. Cullen, Julie Berry, 2003. "The impact of fiscal incentives on student disability rates," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(7-8), pages 1557-1589, August. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
    Other versions:
  18. David N. Figlio & Lawrence S. Getzler, 2002. "Accountability , Ability and Disability: Gaming the System," NBER Working Papers 9307, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  19. Jacob, Brian A., 2005. "Accountability, incentives and behavior: the impact of high-stakes testing in the Chicago Public Schools," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 89(5-6), pages 761-796, June. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  20. Nechyba, Thomas J., 2002. "Introducing School Choice into Multi-District Public School Systems," Working Papers 02-13, Duke University, Department of Economics. [Downloadable!]
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Full references

Cited by:
(explanations, 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.)

  1. Cecilia Elena Rouse & Jane Hannaway & Dan Goldhaber & David Figlio, 2007. "Feeling the Florida Heat? How Low-Performing Schools Respond to Voucher and Accountability Pressure," NBER Working Papers 13681, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
    Other versions:
  2. Jonah E. Rockoff & Lesley J. Turner, 2008. "Short Run Impacts of Accountability on School Quality," NBER Working Papers 14564, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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