High School Accountability: Early Evidence From Florida's Broward County Public Schools

• In Event: 70.066 - Roundtable Session 28
  In Roundtable Session: 70.066-14 - High School Dropout: Issues and Policies

Abstract

In 2009, Florida adopted its Differentiated Accountability (DA) plan, the first accountability policy that specifically incorporated college readiness in addition to the traditional benchmarks on standardized tests and graduation rates. In this paper we use a rich panel of high school students in Broward County Public Schools to present the early evidence of high school accountability on student outcomes including participation and performance in Advanced Placement (AP) tests. Using a difference-in-difference approach, we find that DA increases overall participation in AP tests, especially among minority and low-income students and in low-performing schools. However, it doesn’t have any impact on students’ performance in AP tests and most of the performance gains are concentrated among White students and in high performing schools.

Authors

• Patrice Iatarola, Florida State University

• Niu Gao, Public Policy Institute of California