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This study was focused on understanding the students and parents of high school who how to face school accountability, including attitude, approaches and context index. The research process included literature review and questionnaire survey. The population of this study was the high school students and parents across Southern Taiwan, Kaohsiung area, 751 students and 443 parents¡¦ questionnaires were returned. The data was analyzed through item analysis, explore factor analysis, reliability analysis, descriptive statistic, one-way ANOVA, two-way ANOVA, multipack regression. The findings of the study were as follows: A. There are six types of school accountability approaches in students and parents, they are: respond to government, school chose, professional and democratic teaching, professional school administration, school route for retreat and respond to politician. B. There are six types of school accountability contexts in students and parents, they are: school equipments, administrational strategies, students¡¦ learning achievements, teaching and learning efficiency, origin and vent of students, percentage of satisfaction with students and parents. C. High school students and parents show high and positive attitude toward school accountability, especially in parents are higher then students. D. Different backgrounds of students and parents affect to school accountability attitude, approach and context index. E. The professional school administration affect students to school accountability attitude deeply; the respond to government approach, teaching and learning efficiency approach, and origin and vent of students affect parents to school accountability attitude deeply. The suggestions of the study for Taiwan policymakers were as follows: A. Promoting school accountability system can help parents and students to choose school. B. Promoting school accountability should be satisfied to any sort of school stakeholders¡¦ needs. C. School accountability should run in circle that was including in input, process, output and feedback. D. Different schools should be evaluated by different criterion.

This work expanded on previous research on school effectiveness by developing and testing hypotheses about the specific relationships between school characteristics---including aggregated student and classroom characteristics---and student academic performance. The work used data from the "Early Childhood Transitions Project," a study of intensive social and educational services in a suburban school system, to identify and test the effect of a limited set of school-level characteristics on test score gains made by individual students on the Metropolitan Achievement Test (MAT) between the second and third grade. The analyses found that there are differences in the size of schools, the percent of low performing students, and the percent of students who are non-English speaking across the schools in the sample. Test score gains are affected by concentrations of these types of students at the schools. Students at schools in this sample with high concentrations of non-English speaking students or high concentrations of Hispanic students achieve lower test score gains than students in other schools. Another "concentration effect" emerged from the analysis of high-performing students in the sample. In particular, female students with high scores on the second grade MAT who are in schools with large concentrations of students who perform poorly on the second grade exam have smaller third grade test score gains than similar students who are in schools without a concentration of low performing students. These results suggest that more attention be paid to the influence that the characteristics of the student population have on the school's ability to implement the curriculum. As a first step, researchers may want to simply document the differences in the educational characteristics of students entering schools. This would provide evidence of the segregation that occurs across schools. Researchers may then want to conceptualize students within schools in terms of their homogeneity on demographic measures and their homogeneity on educational characteristics. This "educational minority or majority" concept may bring researchers closer to understanding the school environment, as it is organized by schools and experienced by children. / Ph. D.

This thesis is composed by three independent essays in economics of education, which aim to assess the impact of different public policies in Brazil. The first chapter studies the effects of a government scholarship program for low-income college students, the Prouni. Propensity score matching based on observable student characteristics and a proxy for previous student performance is used to deal with selection effects. The results are robust across different specifications, and suggest that students who received a scholarship perform better and take less time to reach their final year of college than comparable students. The estimated effects are higher among students with full scholarships than for students with partial scholarships, indicating that the amount of aid received matters. Results also indicate that full scholarship recipients also have a lower probability of working while in college. The second chapter provides evidence on a large-scale pay for performance program in the state of São Paulo, which awarded group bonuses to school teachers and staff conditional on improvements in student performance. Results using a difference-in-differences and triple-differences framework show that the program had overall positive effects on student performance, although improvements vary across grades and subjects. Although it could be expected that free-riding effects increase with the number of teachers in schools, thereby limiting the impact of the program, this effect seems to be modest. Results also show that initially low-performing schools improved much more than the average. The third chapter analyzes whether the provision of information on school quality affects students\' school choices. More specifically, it explores whether the publication of grades obtained at a standardized high school test (the Enem) resulted in changes in enrollments in high- and low-performing schools. A sharp regression discontinuity design is used, taking advantage of the fact that an exogenous rule determined that only schools with a minimum number of test-takers would have their results published. The results show that the disclosure of school grades did not significantly affect enrollment decisions, in neither private nor public schools. The findings remain unchanged when controlling for the degree of competition faced by schools or their socio-economic environment. / Esta tese é composta por três ensaios independentes em economia da educação, que têm como objetivo avaliar o impacto de diferentes políticas públicas no Brasil. O primeiro capítulo estuda os efeitos do Prouni, um programa que oferece bolsas para estudantes de baixa renda no ensino superior. A metodologia usada para lidar com efeitos de seleção é a de propensity score matching, com base em características observáveis dos alunos e uma proxy para desempenho inicial. Os resultados, que são robustos a diferentes especificações, mostram que os bolsistas têm melhor desempenho e levam menos tempo para chegar ao último ano de faculdade do que alunos comparáveis. Os efeitos estimados são maiores para bolsistas integrais do que para bolsistas parciais, sugerindo que o valor da bolsa é relevante. Os resultados também indicam que os bolsistas integrais têm probabilidade menor de trabalhar durante a faculdade. O segundo capítulo apresenta evidências empíricas relativas ao efeito do programa de incentivos para professores do Estado de São Paulo, no qual foram distribuídos bônus de grupo para professores e funcionários em função da melhora do desempenho dos alunos. Neste capítulo é usado o método de diferenças em diferenças e de diferenças triplas. Os resultados sugerem que o programa teve efeitos positivos sobre o desempenho dos alunos, no entanto, os efeitos encontrados variam entre séries e matérias. Embora poderia esperar-se que em escolas com um maior número de professores efeitos de free-riding sejam mais fortes e limitem o efeito da política, este efeito não parece ser importante. O estudo mostra também que escolas com desempenho inicialmente baixo apresentaram melhoras mais importantes do que a média. O terceiro capítulo analisa se a divulgação de informações sobre a qualidade das escolas afeta as escolhas dos alunos. Mais especificamente, procura-se saber se a divulgação das notas obtidas no Enem (Exame Nacional do Ensino Médio) afetou o volume de matrículas em escolas com alto e baixo desempenho. A metodologia usada é a de regressão descontínua, com base em uma regra exógena que determinou que somente as escolas com um número mínimo de alunos que fizeram a prova teriam seus resultados divulgados. Os resultados indicam que a divulgação de notas a nível de escolas não teve impacto significativo sobre as decisões de matrícula, tanto no caso de escolas privadas como públicas. Os resultados se mantêm quando é levado em consideração o grau de concorrência enfrentado pelas escolas, ou o seu ambiente socioeconômico.

<p>Comprised of three related chapters, this dissertation evaluates the effects of the North Carolina School Accountability System on agents in different markets using, in most part, school data provided by the North Carolina Education Research Data Center. North Carolina introduced its primary school improvement program, the ABCs of NC, in 1997. The model includes growth and performance composites and recognized/rewarded schools for performing well. In response to the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, the state introduced a second accountability program, AYP, to run in conjunction with the ABC system. The AYP program focuses on closing the achievement gap and its primary goal is for all public school children to perform at grade level in reading and mathematics by the end of the 2013-14 school year. Failure to show improvement toward this goal leads to sanctions and increased accountability pressures at the school level. This dissertation seeks to determine the impact of the school accountability program on two groups of individuals - teachers and homebuyers.</p><p>Chapter 1 examines the influence of school accountability on teacher mobility. I estimate the effect of accountability incentives - teacher bonuses under the ABCs, and accountability pressures - threats and sanctions under AYP, on teacher mobility between schools. I investigate how the state's two accountability systems affect the distribution of teachers to schools, and in particular the willingness of quality teachers to teach in schools where student achievement is low. I provide empirical evidence on the differential effects the two accountability systems have on the ability of low-performing schools to employ quality teachers. It may be that bonus given under the state's ABC system can help to offset high turnover rates in schools that face increased accountability pressure under the AYP system. Or conversely, if schools that face increased accountability pressure are not able to perform well enough to receive bonuses it may lead to even higher turnover rates. These higher turnover rates will undoubtedly place personal burdens on students, administrators, and parents; ultimately undermining the primary goals of performance gains under school accountability.</p><p>In Chapter 2, I examine the affect the labeling of schools under the ABC system has on the housing market. Since the passing of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, each state is required to publicly report school quality measures and student test performance. Many states, including North Carolina, were already reporting their own quality measure and since 2002 have included an additional quality measure to meet the newer federal requirements. There has been extensive research documenting the relationship between housing prices and test scores at local public schools. Given the research, one may presume additional information about school quality to also influence the housing market.</p><p>This chapter examines whether state reported school quality measures influence household sorting decisions, using a regression discontinuity approach and comprehensive data on real estate transactions over the period 2003-2007. The results suggest that even when taking into account student performance on test scores and other variables the market's response to the release of information related to school quality provided by the state's recognition system is significant.</p><p>Chapter 3 provides a narrative on the extent to which public perceptions of the quality of local schools correspond to actual service quality. The chapter also discusses ways in which the relationship between actual and perceived school quality may vary across different groups of people, specifically parents of school-age children, homeowners, and minority or low-income households. The results in chapter 2 suggest that public accountability systems may have a causal effect on citizen perceptions of service quality.</p><p> However, due to data limitations, very few economics studies have analyzed the relationship between school accountability and public perceptions. With the use of a perceptions survey of North Carolina residents, I propose a study investigating public perceptions of the quality of public schools and the degree to which they freely available information about the level of school quality and student performance at the schools.</p> / Dissertation

The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 is designed to help create a national minimum standard in the United States‘ public education system by requiring states to implement accountability systems. I examine the effect of No Child Left Behind on private school enrollment using a difference in differences model. Using data from the Private School Universe Survey, conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics, which is a survey conducted every two years and is mandatory for each American private school‘s administration to complete, I can evaluate the movement between public and private schools during the period when the requirements of No Child Left Behind were being implemented. I hypothesize that public schools have moved resources away from high achieving students toward the marginal students causing the high achieving students to enroll in private schools. Hence, private school enrollment will have increased due to No Child Left Behind. I find through my regressions that this hypothesis is true; the percentage of school-aged children in private schools increases after the signing of the No Child Left Behind Act.

This thesis is composed by three independent essays in economics of education, which aim to assess the impact of different public policies in Brazil. The first chapter studies the effects of a government scholarship program for low-income college students, the Prouni. Propensity score matching based on observable student characteristics and a proxy for previous student performance is used to deal with selection effects. The results are robust across different specifications, and suggest that students who received a scholarship perform better and take less time to reach their final year of college than comparable students. The estimated effects are higher among students with full scholarships than for students with partial scholarships, indicating that the amount of aid received matters. Results also indicate that full scholarship recipients also have a lower probability of working while in college. The second chapter provides evidence on a large-scale pay for performance program in the state of São Paulo, which awarded group bonuses to school teachers and staff conditional on improvements in student performance. Results using a difference-in-differences and triple-differences framework show that the program had overall positive effects on student performance, although improvements vary across grades and subjects. Although it could be expected that free-riding effects increase with the number of teachers in schools, thereby limiting the impact of the program, this effect seems to be modest. Results also show that initially low-performing schools improved much more than the average. The third chapter analyzes whether the provision of information on school quality affects students\' school choices. More specifically, it explores whether the publication of grades obtained at a standardized high school test (the Enem) resulted in changes in enrollments in high- and low-performing schools. A sharp regression discontinuity design is used, taking advantage of the fact that an exogenous rule determined that only schools with a minimum number of test-takers would have their results published. The results show that the disclosure of school grades did not significantly affect enrollment decisions, in neither private nor public schools. The findings remain unchanged when controlling for the degree of competition faced by schools or their socio-economic environment. / Esta tese é composta por três ensaios independentes em economia da educação, que têm como objetivo avaliar o impacto de diferentes políticas públicas no Brasil. O primeiro capítulo estuda os efeitos do Prouni, um programa que oferece bolsas para estudantes de baixa renda no ensino superior. A metodologia usada para lidar com efeitos de seleção é a de propensity score matching, com base em características observáveis dos alunos e uma proxy para desempenho inicial. Os resultados, que são robustos a diferentes especificações, mostram que os bolsistas têm melhor desempenho e levam menos tempo para chegar ao último ano de faculdade do que alunos comparáveis. Os efeitos estimados são maiores para bolsistas integrais do que para bolsistas parciais, sugerindo que o valor da bolsa é relevante. Os resultados também indicam que os bolsistas integrais têm probabilidade menor de trabalhar durante a faculdade. O segundo capítulo apresenta evidências empíricas relativas ao efeito do programa de incentivos para professores do Estado de São Paulo, no qual foram distribuídos bônus de grupo para professores e funcionários em função da melhora do desempenho dos alunos. Neste capítulo é usado o método de diferenças em diferenças e de diferenças triplas. Os resultados sugerem que o programa teve efeitos positivos sobre o desempenho dos alunos, no entanto, os efeitos encontrados variam entre séries e matérias. Embora poderia esperar-se que em escolas com um maior número de professores efeitos de free-riding sejam mais fortes e limitem o efeito da política, este efeito não parece ser importante. O estudo mostra também que escolas com desempenho inicialmente baixo apresentaram melhoras mais importantes do que a média. O terceiro capítulo analisa se a divulgação de informações sobre a qualidade das escolas afeta as escolhas dos alunos. Mais especificamente, procura-se saber se a divulgação das notas obtidas no Enem (Exame Nacional do Ensino Médio) afetou o volume de matrículas em escolas com alto e baixo desempenho. A metodologia usada é a de regressão descontínua, com base em uma regra exógena que determinou que somente as escolas com um número mínimo de alunos que fizeram a prova teriam seus resultados divulgados. Os resultados indicam que a divulgação de notas a nível de escolas não teve impacto significativo sobre as decisões de matrícula, tanto no caso de escolas privadas como públicas. Os resultados se mantêm quando é levado em consideração o grau de concorrência enfrentado pelas escolas, ou o seu ambiente socioeconômico.

Submitted by Renata Lopes (renatasil82@gmail.com) on 2016-04-15T20:16:03Z No. of bitstreams: 1 ericsonaraujodacosta.pdf: 1164360 bytes, checksum: fe0efa863e02c8d748b2691c2b94cf11 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Adriana Oliveira (adriana.oliveira@ufjf.edu.br) on 2016-04-24T03:16:37Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 ericsonaraujodacosta.pdf: 1164360 bytes, checksum: fe0efa863e02c8d748b2691c2b94cf11 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-24T03:16:37Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 ericsonaraujodacosta.pdf: 1164360 bytes, checksum: fe0efa863e02c8d748b2691c2b94cf11 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015-01-27 / Esta dissertação, desenvolvida no Programa de Pós-graduação Profissional em Gestão e Avaliação Pública da Universidade Federal de Juiz de Fora, é resultado de uma pesquisa que investigou ações voltadas à efetivação do envolvimento parental na vida escolar e, consequentemente, na melhoria do desempenho dos alunos do Ensino Fundamental de uma escola do interior do Acre. Nosso principal objetivo foi detectar o que já havia sido feito nessa instituição de ensino em relação ao fomento de ações de envolvimento parental, relativo à responsabilização das famílias, partindo do pressuposto de que as iniciativas deveriam ser criadas pela escola através de seu corpo docente. A investigação se baseou na análise documental, por do Projeto Político Pedagógico da escola e dados documentados durante a reelaboração do mesmo, além da aplicação de questionários para a equipe gestora, a uma amostra de professores do Ensino Fundamental do 1º ao 9º ano, ao presidente e vice-presidente do Grêmio Estudantil e ao representante dos pais no Conselho Escolar da escola pesquisada. Nossa análise dos dados coletadas foi feita em diálogo com os estudos de Epstein (1989) e Epstein e Dauber (1991), que propõem seis formas de envolvimento parental, das quais nos apropriaremos de três consideradas mais pertinentes ao nosso foco de análise das ações desenvolvidas pela escola EBA; além das considerações de Lahire (1997) sobre a influência das condições socioeconômicas no desenvolvimento da aprendizagem e sua ligação com o conceito de envolvimento parental. A investigação nos permitiu perceber que não havia iniciativas concretas de incentivo ao envolvimento das famílias com a vida escolar dos alunos. Com base nesses pressupostos, elaboramos um Plano de Ação Educacional com vistas à institucionalização do envolvimento parental nessa unidade escolar, contribuindo, assim, com a melhoria do desempenho dos alunos de vários níveis socioeconômicos aos quais a escola atende. / This dissertation is the result of a survey on the actions to the concrete realization of parental involvement in the learning process and, consequently, improving the performance of elementary school students in a school in the interior of Acre. Our main goal was to detect what had already been done in this institution in relation to the development of parental involvement actions on the responsibility of families, assuming the initiatives being taken by the school through its faculty. The research was based on document analysis through the school Pedagogical Policy Project, and the use of data collected through the questionnaires for the management team, to elementary school teachers from 1st to 9th grade students and vice president student-body president and the representative of parents in the school board of the studied school. Such research, as well as allow us to analyze the case management also allowed us to introduce the school community searched an Educational Action Plan to serve as the parental involvement institutionalization parameter in this school unit, thus contributing to the improvement of the performance of students of various socioeconomic levels to which the school serves.

While much of the literature regarding college readiness focuses on student-specific factors, such as the individual's academic achievement; scores on college readiness assessments; and high school GPA, more research is needed to understand which school-level factors have the most influence on the percentage of college-ready graduates. The purpose of this research study was to explore the impact of various school-level factors (i.e., student demographics, college entrance exam facts, course offerings, and school characteristics) on the percentage of college ready graduates from Texas public high schools serving Grades 9-12 over a 3-year period. A multiple regression analysis conducted for each year's data resulted in three regression models, which identified various predictors (e.g. per-pupil instructional expenditures, teacher years of experience, taking advanced and/or dual credit coursework) of the percentage of college-ready graduates for schools accounting for 91.7%, 79.5%, and 65.6% of the explained variance in 2013, 2014, and 2015, respectively. Findings from this study provide educational leaders with data that could help them to make better-informed decisions regarding potential college readiness initiatives that, ultimately, could improve student performance.

The United States education system has experienced an evolution of school accountability systems that has led to changes and variation in state school grading systems. This study shows that the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) of 2015, a recent reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) of 1965, provides greater autonomy to individual states in evaluating and reporting school accountability than in preceding years and provides opportunities for states to implement a more holistic or well-rounded approach to school grading. ESSA policy and this study encourages states to choose to evaluate schools more holistically by implementing a wider and more balanced range of indicators that are used to formulate publicly reported school grades. Many issues and historical events, both in the nation and in Utah, are shared to show their influence on the evolution of school accountability. The relevant components of ESSA are explored. An historical overview of school accountability, standardized testing, school grading, and public educational reporting in the state of Utah is included. Scholarly perspectives about school accountability and reporting systems are also presented. This descriptive study incorporates archival research through a review of grades K-8 school grading systems. The school report card systems and indicators are collected and compared from two sequential time periods: first, the time period after NCLB and before ESSA plans were approved is referred, and second, the current time period, based off of data from currently implemented state ESSA plans. Data from all 50 states and Washington D.C. are analyzed and contrasted with Utah's data. Special focus is placed on the indicators that are not dictated by the federal government but those which are chosen by the state that promote a more holistic measure of accountability. The results from this study show that while a more holistic approach to school grading across the states has resulted from ESSA implementation, Utah's ESSA plan and school grading system, along with the other 49 states and Washington D.C., do not currently reflect an adequate holistic measure of school accountability. State Legislators and State School Board Members will find this study to be enlightening as they create more holistic school grading systems.