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This research investigates the effects of rewards policies on classroom assessment practices used by teachers and subsequent effects on student performance. Rewards policies provide financial bonuses to schools based on high or improving student performance on standardized examinations. Reflecting a trend toward demanding more accountability from public institutions in the 1990s, 20 states had such policies by the beginning of the 2000-2001 school year. Because rewards policies tie financial incentives to student performance on standardized examinations, it seems reasonable to expect that they may affect the way teachers assess students in their classrooms. The two studies in this research (pre-post and non-equivalent control group studies) use data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) from 1992 and 1998. Teachers of students selected for NAEP who took the 4th grade reading assessment were asked how often they used different assessment practices and about many other characteristics (e.g., educational attainment, experience, and teaching philosophy). These data are used to estimate a two-stage model. In the first stage, classroom assessment practices are estimated as functions of the policy indicator and other explanatory variables using weighted binary probit models. Where there is evidence that rewards policies affect the frequency with which teachers use classroom assessment practices, the first-stage instruments are included in (second-stage) models of student performance, models estimated with weighted least-squares regression. All models were estimated accounting for the multi-stage sampling design with which the students were drawn from their respective populations. This research shows that students with teachers exposed to rewards policies are more likely to be tested with multiple-choice tests and also have higher performance than those not exposed. The increased multiple-choice testing may reflect teachers’ interest in preparing students for the statewide examination, a sort of ‘teaching to the type of test.’ However, this research also shows that it is not the increased multiple-choice testing that leads to higher academic performance. By using an instrumental variables approach to study the effect of these policies, this research protects against more naïve inferences regarding the effects of rewards policies on the classroom experiences of teachers and students. |
