IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fsu/wpaper/wp2009_03_02.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

School accountability laws and the consumption of psychostimulants

Author

Listed:
  • Farasat A.S. Bokhari

    (Department of Economics, Florida State University)

  • Helen Schnedier

    (Department of Economics, University of Texas at Austin)

Abstract

Over the past decade, several states introduced varying degrees of accountability systems for schools, which became federal law with the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. The intent of these laws was to improve academic performance and to make school quality more observable. Nonetheless, schools have reacted to these pressures in several different ways, some of which were not intended. We make use of the variation across states and over time in specific provisions of these accountability laws and find that accountability laws effect medical diagnoses and subsequent treatment options of school aged children. Specifically, children in states with more stringent accountability laws are more likely to be both, diagnosed with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), and consequently, prescribed psychostimulant drugs for controlling the symptoms.

Suggested Citation

  • Farasat A.S. Bokhari & Helen Schnedier, 2009. "School accountability laws and the consumption of psychostimulants," Working Papers wp2009_03_02, Department of Economics, Florida State University, revised 08 Mar 2009.
  • Handle: RePEc:fsu:wpaper:wp2009_03_02
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://coss.fsu.edu/econpapers/wpaper/wp2009_03_02.pdf
    File Function: First version, 2009-03
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Figlio, David N., 2006. "Testing, crime and punishment," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(4-5), pages 837-851, May.
    2. Thomas S. Dee & Brian Jacob, 2011. "The impact of no Child Left Behind on student achievement," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 30(3), pages 418-446, June.
    3. Eric A. Hanushek & Margaret E. Raymond, 2005. "Does school accountability lead to improved student performance?," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 24(2), pages 297-327.
    4. Julie Berry Cullen & Randall Reback, 2006. "Tinkering Toward Accolades: School Gaming Under a Performance Accountability System," NBER Working Papers 12286, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Edward P. Lazear, 2001. "Educational Production," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 116(3), pages 777-803.
    6. Reback, Randall, 2008. "Teaching to the rating: School accountability and the distribution of student achievement," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(5-6), pages 1394-1415, June.
    7. Farasat A. S. Bokhari & Gary M. Fournier, 2013. "Entry in the ADHD drugs market: Welfare impact of generics and me-too's," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 61(2), pages 339-392, June.
    8. 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.
    9. Anna Aizer, 2008. "Peer Effects and Human Capital Accumulation: the Externalities of ADD," NBER Working Papers 14354, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. 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.
    11. Derek Neal & Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach, 2010. "Left Behind by Design: Proficiency Counts and Test-Based Accountability," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 92(2), pages 263-283, May.
    12. Daniel M. Koretz, 2002. "Limitations in the Use of Achievement Tests as Measures of Educators' Productivity," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 37(4), pages 752-777.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Chorniy, Anna & Currie, Janet & Sonchak, Lyudmyla, 2018. "Exploding asthma and ADHD caseloads: The role of medicaid managed care," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 60(C), pages 1-15.
    2. Bertoni, Marco & Brunello, Giorgio & Rocco, Lorenzo, 2013. "When the cat is near, the mice won't play: The effect of external examiners in Italian schools," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 104(C), pages 65-77.
    3. Brun, Cédric & Demazeux, Steeves & Vittorio, Pierangelo Di & Gonon, François & Gorry, Philippe & Konsman, Jan Peter & Lung, Fanny & Lung, Yannick & Minard, Michel & Montalban, Matthieu & Rumeau, Nicol, 2015. "La construction des catégories diagnostiques de maladie mentale," Revue de la Régulation - Capitalisme, institutions, pouvoirs, Association Recherche et Régulation, vol. 17.
    4. Patricia M. Anderson & Kristin F. Butcher & Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach, 2017. "Adequate (or Adipose?) Yearly Progress: Assessing the Effect of “No Child Left Behind” on Children's Obesity," Education Finance and Policy, MIT Press, vol. 12(1), pages 54-76, Winter.
    5. Owens, Jayanti, 2021. "Parental intervention in school, academic pressure, and childhood diagnoses of ADHD," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 272(C).
    6. Marcus, Jan & Reif, Simon & Wuppermann, Amélie & Rouche, Amélie, 2020. "Increased instruction time and stress-related health problems among school children," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 70.
    7. Bokhari, Farasat A.S. & Mariuzzo, Franco, 2018. "Demand estimation and merger simulations for drugs: Logits v. AIDS," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 61(C), pages 653-685.
    8. Farasat A. S. Bokhari & Gary M. Fournier, 2013. "Entry in the ADHD drugs market: Welfare impact of generics and me-too's," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 61(2), pages 339-392, June.
    9. Simon Burgess, 2022. "Beyond the threshold: The implications for pupil achievement of reforming school performance metrics," Bristol Economics Discussion Papers 22/770, School of Economics, University of Bristol, UK.
    10. Burgess, Simon & Thomson, Dave, 2023. "Beyond the threshold: The implications for pupil achievement of reforming school performance metrics," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 97(C).
    11. Hampton, Matt & McNamara, Scott, 2022. "The impact of educational rewards on the diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 47(C).

    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. Feng, Li & Figlio, David & Sass, Tim, 2018. "School accountability and teacher mobility," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 103(C), pages 1-17.
    2. Craig, Steven G. & Imberman, Scott A. & Perdue, Adam, 2015. "Do administrators respond to their accountability ratings? The response of school budgets to accountability grades," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 55-68.
    3. Chakrabarti, Rajashri, 2014. "Incentives and responses under No Child Left Behind: Credible threats and the role of competition," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 110(C), pages 124-146.
    4. Richardson, J.T., 2015. "Accountability incentives and academic achievement: Distributional impacts of accountability when standards are set low," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 44(C), pages 1-16.
    5. Derek Neal, 2011. "The Design of Performance Pay in Education," NBER Working Papers 16710, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Patricia M. Anderson & Kristin F. Butcher & Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach, 2017. "Adequate (or Adipose?) Yearly Progress: Assessing the Effect of “No Child Left Behind” on Children's Obesity," Education Finance and Policy, MIT Press, vol. 12(1), pages 54-76, Winter.
    7. Craig, Steven G. & Imberman, Scott A. & Perdue, Adam, 2013. "Does it pay to get an A? School resource allocations in response to accountability ratings," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 73(1), pages 30-42.
    8. Gregg, John J. & Lavertu, Stéphane, 2023. "Test-based accountability and educational equity: Breaking through local district politics?," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 97(C).
    9. Chiang, Hanley, 2009. "How accountability pressure on failing schools affects student achievement," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 93(9-10), pages 1045-1057, October.
    10. Seth Gershenson, 2016. "Performance Standards and Employee Effort: Evidence From Teacher Absences," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 35(3), pages 615-638, June.
    11. Gershenson, Seth & Holt, Stephen B. & Papageorge, Nicholas W., 2015. "Who Believes in Me? The Effect of Student-Teacher Demographic Match on Teacher Expectations," IZA Discussion Papers 9202, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    12. Cuesta, José Ignacio & González, Felipe & Larroulet Philippi, Cristian, 2020. "Distorted quality signals in school markets," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 147(C).
    13. Reback, Randall, 2008. "Teaching to the rating: School accountability and the distribution of student achievement," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(5-6), pages 1394-1415, June.
    14. Evan Riehl & Meredith Welch, 2023. "Accountability, Test Prep Incentives, and the Design of Math and English Exams," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 42(1), pages 60-96, January.
    15. Michael Coelli & Gigi Foster & Andrew Leigh, 2018. "Do School Principals Respond to Increased Public Scrutiny? New Survey Evidence from Australia," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 94(S1), pages 73-101, June.
    16. Holbein, John B. & Ladd, Helen F., 2017. "Accountability pressure: Regression discontinuity estimates of how No Child Left Behind influenced student behavior," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 55-67.
    17. Nunes, Luis C. & Reis, Ana Balcão & Seabra, Carmo, 2015. "The publication of school rankings: A step toward increased accountability?," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 15-23.
    18. Rajashri Chakrabarti, 2013. "Accountability with Voucher Threats, Responses, and the Test-Taking Population: Regression Discontinuity Evidence from Florida," Education Finance and Policy, MIT Press, vol. 8(2), pages 121-167, April.
    19. Bertoni, Marco & Brunello, Giorgio & Rocco, Lorenzo, 2013. "When the cat is near, the mice won't play: The effect of external examiners in Italian schools," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 104(C), pages 65-77.
    20. 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.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Attention Decit Hyperactivity Disorder; ADD/ADHD; psychostimulants; school accountability laws;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I18 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Government Policy; Regulation; Public Health
    • I28 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Government Policy
    • H70 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations - - - General

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:fsu:wpaper:wp2009_03_02. 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: Dmitry Ryvkin (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/defsuus.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.