The Effect of School Accountability Systems on the Level and Distribution of Student Achievement
利用美国各州逐步引入学校问责制的差异，分析其对全国教育进步评估（NAEP）学生成绩增长的影响，发现问责制提高了所有学生的成绩，但缩小了西语裔与白人差距的同时扩大了黑人与白人差距。
The use of school accountability in the United States to improve student performance began in the separate states during the 1980s and was elevated through the federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. Evaluating the impact of accountability is dife cult because it applies to entire states and can be confused with other changes in the states. We consider how the differential introduction of accountability across states affects growth in student performance on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). Our preliminary analysis e nds that: 1) accountability improves scores of all students; 2) there is no signie cant difference between simply reporting scores and attaching consequences; and, 3) while accountability tends to narrow the Hispanic‐ White gap, it tends to widen the Black‐ White gap in scores. The last e nding suggests that a single policy instrument cannot be expected to satisfy multiple simultaneous goals.