IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aea/aejapp/v11y2019i3p382-423.html

The Causes and Consequences of Test Score Manipulation: Evidence from the New York Regents Examinations

Author

Listed:
  • Thomas S. Dee
  • Will Dobbie
  • Brian A. Jacob
  • Jonah Rockoff

Abstract

We show that the design and decentralized scoring of New York's high school exit exams—the Regents Examinations—led to systematic manipulation of test scores just below important proficiency cutoffs. Exploiting a series of reforms that eliminated score manipulation, we find heterogeneous effects of test score manipulation on academic outcomes. While inflating a score increases the probability of a student graduating from high school by about 17 percentage points, the probability of taking advanced coursework declines by roughly 10 percentage points. We argue that these results are consistent with test score manipulation helping less advanced students on the margin of dropping out but hurting more advanced students that are not pushed to gain a solid foundation in the introductory material.

Suggested Citation

  • Thomas S. Dee & Will Dobbie & Brian A. Jacob & Jonah Rockoff, 2019. "The Causes and Consequences of Test Score Manipulation: Evidence from the New York Regents Examinations," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 11(3), pages 382-423, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:aea:aejapp:v:11:y:2019:i:3:p:382-423
    Note: DOI: 10.1257/app.20170520
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/app.20170520
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/app.20170520.data
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/app.20170520.appx
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/app.20170520.ds
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • H75 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations - - - State and Local Government: Health, Education, and Welfare
    • I21 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Analysis of Education
    • I28 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Government Policy

    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:aea:aejapp:v:11:y:2019:i:3:p:382-423. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Michael P. Albert (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aeaaaea.html .

    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.