The adoption of state accountability testing in the 1990s coincided with the movement of some school start dates from September into August. Using data from Wisconsin, this paper connects these phenomena, showing that some low-scoring districts advanced their school start dates to allow their...

Despite a large literature examining the effect of litigation on education finance and student achievement, there is relatively little recent evidence about how extra resources generated by litigation are spent. This paper uses national data to examine the effects of high court finance rulings...

Many school accountability programs are built on the premise that the sanctions attached to failure will produce higher future student achievement. Furthermore, such programs often include subgroup achievement rules that attempt to hold schools accountable for the performance of all demographic...

This study examines the theoretical and practical implications of ranking teachers with a one-dimensional value-added metric when teacher effectiveness varies across subjects or student types. We create a theoretical framework which suggests specific tests of the standard teacher input...