Membership has its Privileges: Student Incentives and Stigmatized Identities in the Accountability Era

• In Event: 072 - Regular Session. Effects of Accountability on Students, Classrooms, and Public Discourse

Abstract

Education policy increasingly holds schools and teachers accountable for student test scores. However, in many cases these tests, while high stakes for schools and teachers, have no implications for students. We examine one organizational response, in which schools sought to attach social incentives to a previously low stakes test, assigning high visibility color-coded identification cards for students based on their test scores. While rational choice perspectives suggest that such measures should boost student achievement, research in social psychology suggests that this effort might create stigmatized identities that depress student test scores. Using difference in difference and regression discontinuity based designs, we show that this program boosted achievement on the previously low stakes test, but did not influence achievement on a test that was already high stakes for students. Thus, we conclude that the school was successful in its goal of passing the incentives on the previously low stakes down to students. However, we find some evidence to suggest that stereotype threats limited this strategy’s effectiveness for Hispanic students. Furthermore, regression discontinuity analyses indicate that low-status ID card assignment had negative effects for student achievement.

Authors

• Thurston A. Domina, University of California-Irvine

• Andrew Penner, University of California-Irvine

• Emily K. Penner, University of California-Irvine

• Marianne Bitler, University of California-Irvine