Ranking Schools: A Step Toward Increased Accountability or a Mere Discriminatory Practice?
FEUNL Working Paper No. 567
17 Pages Posted: 6 Aug 2012
Date Written: August 6, 2012
Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the discussion of the effects of published school rankings based on average scores obtained by students on national exams. We study the effectiveness of this (low-stakes) accountability mechanism; we analyze whether students react to these rankings, by moving in or out of high-schools according to their scores and examine the movements of closing of schools. Our results suggest that families react strongly to published rankings. We also look at the changes in the socio-economic background of students of poorly performing schools in order to evaluate whether the publication of rankings has increased inequality, as feared by many observers. According to our results, published rankings do in fact reinforce stratification by income.
Keywords: school accountability, school rankings
JEL Classification: I21, I28, H42
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation
Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?
Recommended Papers
-
Current Accounts in a Currency Union
By Emil Stavrev and Jörg Decressin
-
Monetary and Fiscal Policy Aspects of Indirect Tax Changes in a Monetary Union
By Anna Lipinska and Leopold Von Thadden
-
Accounting for Global Dispersion of Current Accounts
By Yongsung Chang, Sun-bin Kim, ...
-
Adjusting to External Imbalances within the EMU, the Case of Portugal
-
Adjusting to External Imbalances within the EMU, the Case of Portugal
-
Comparing Exchange Market Pressure in West and Southern African Countries
By José Mário Lopes and Fábio Santos
-
The Ambivalence of Two-Part Tariffs for Bottleneck Access
By Steffen Hoernig and Ingo Vogelsang