Working Paper: NBER ID: w24836
Authors: Annika B. Bergbauer; Eric A. Hanushek; Ludger Woessmann
Abstract: School systems regularly use student assessments for accountability purposes. But, as highlighted by our conceptual model, different configurations of assessment usage generate performance-conducive incentives of different strengths for different stakeholders in different school environments. We build a dataset of over 2 million students in 59 countries observed over 6 waves in the international PISA student achievement test 2000-2015. Our empirical model exploits the country panel dimension to investigate reforms in assessment systems over time, where identification comes from taking out country and year fixed effects along with a rich set of student, school, and country measures. We find that the expansion of standardized external comparisons, both school-based and student-based, is associated with improvements in student achievement. The effect of school-based comparison is stronger in countries with initially low performance. Similarly, standardized monitoring without external comparison has a positive effect in initially poorly performing countries. By contrast, the introduction of solely internal testing and internal teacher monitoring including inspectorates does not affect student achievement. Our findings point out the pitfalls of overly broad generalizations from specific country testing systems.
Keywords: student assessments; accountability; PISA; student achievement; educational policy
JEL Codes: H0; I20; J24
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| expansion of standardized external comparisons (O57) | improvements in student achievement (I24) |
| school-based comparisons (I24) | higher student outcomes (I24) |
| standardized monitoring without external comparison (C52) | positive effect on student achievement in poorly performing countries (O57) |
| internal testing and internal teacher monitoring (A21) | no effect on student achievement (I24) |
| clearer, more targeted information from assessments (D80) | stronger incentives for teachers and students (A21) |
| standardized external comparisons (C52) | significant increases in achievement, particularly in math (I24) |
| internal teacher monitoring (A21) | negative effects on performance (D29) |