scholarly journals The Causes and Consequences of Test Score Manipulation: Evidence from the New York Regents Examinations

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 382-423 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas S. Dee ◽  
Will Dobbie ◽  
Brian A. Jacob ◽  
Jonah Rockoff
Keyword(s):  
High School ◽  
New York ◽  
Test Score ◽  
Dropping Out ◽  
Exit Exams ◽  
High School Exit Exams ◽  
Percentage Points ◽  
Heterogeneous Effects ◽  
Advanced Students ◽  
Introductory Material

We show that the design and decentralized scoring of New York’s high school exit exams—the Regents Examinations—led to systematic manipulation of test scores just below important proficiency cutoffs. Exploiting a series of reforms that eliminated score manipulation, we find heterogeneous effects of test score manipulation on academic outcomes. While inflating a score increases the probability of a student graduating from high school by about 17 percentage points, the probability of taking advanced coursework declines by roughly 10 percentage points. We argue that these results are consistent with test score manipulation helping less advanced students on the margin of dropping out but hurting more advanced students that are not pushed to gain a solid foundation in the introductory material. (JEL H75, I21, I28)

Trading the Television for a Textbook?: High School Exit Exams and Student Behavior

2014 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 1015-1036 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy M. Diette ◽  
Sara E. Helms
Keyword(s):  
High School ◽  
Student Behavior ◽  
State Level ◽  
The United States ◽  
Exit Exams ◽  
Additional Time ◽  
Significant Drop ◽  
American Time Use Survey ◽  
High School Exit Exams ◽  
High School Exit

Abstract Approximately half of the states in the United States have some form of high school exit exam. One purpose of the exit exams is to create a clear bar which students must pass in order to graduate. Effective exit exams may encourage marginal students to spend additional time on schooling in order to pass the exam. This study exploits state-level variations in timing of implementation to understand how students have responded to the state exit exams. This study uses the American Time Use Survey (ATUS). The ATUS captures, in detail, how individuals spend their day. We find that exit exams are associated with an increase in the amount of time that students spend on educational activities by almost 20 minutes per day in the months in which exams are typically given. The increase comes mainly from an increase in time spent in school and not time spent outside of school on education-related activities. The additional time for education appears to be a trade-off with time spent watching television, which shows a significant drop in exam months for students facing exams.

scholarly journals Re-Examining Exit Exams: New Findings from the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002

2012 ◽  
Vol 20 ◽  
pp. 3 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine Shuster
Keyword(s):  
High School ◽  
Student Achievement ◽  
Longitudinal Study ◽  
Test Score ◽  
School Achievement ◽  
Exit Exams ◽  
Negative Effects ◽  
School Completion ◽  
New Findings ◽  
Education Longitudinal Study

Using the nationally representative, cohort-based data of the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002 (ELS:02), this study employs multiple regression to examine the effects of exit exams on student achievement and school completion. This study finds that exit exams as a whole do not have substantial effects on student achievement in mathematics, twelfth grade GPA, or school completion. Standards-based exams are a positive predictor of dropping out of school but lose their predictive power once GED recipients are coded as completing school. Exit exams do not affect GED seeking and acquisition. When exit exams are disaggregated by type and students are sorted by ninth grade GPA quartiles, end-of-course exams have some negative effects on mathematics test score gains. Students in the bottom two quartiles see reduced test score gains of 28% and 29% of a grade level equivalency (GLE). These effects disappear when students in North Carolina are coded as taking a different type of exam. Standards-based exams had a small positive effect, about 37% of a GLE, on the top quartile of students. Overall, the findings showed no results for school completion and mixed results for test score gains. The article concludes that policymakers looking to boost high school achievement would be better served by working to boost student accomplishments before high school.

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