Educational Methodology, Policy, and Leadership Theses and Dissertations

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Browsing Educational Methodology, Policy, and Leadership Theses and Dissertations by Author "Beach, Paul"

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    The Influence of School Accountability Incentives on State-Level Advanced Placement Outcomes
    (University of Oregon, 2021-04-29) Beach, Paul; Zvoch, Keith
    Research examining the effects of school accountability on student outcomes has focused almost exclusively on numeracy and literacy proficiency. However, states now use a variety of indicators for school accountability purposes, including Advanced Placement (AP) exam data. This study examined the influence of school accountability incentives on average state-level AP exam performance in four individual courses. Outcome data was collected from the College Board’s publicly available national and state annual AP reports from 1997 to 2019. Event study, difference-in-differences, and comparative interrupted time series analyses compared outcomes between states that did and did not introduce AP exam accountability indicators in the timeframe analyzed. Results were interpreted using coherent pattern matching to describe and evaluate the empirical coherence of policy effects across all analyses and outcomes. In general, inconsistent findings emerged with respect to statistical significance with the comparative interrupted time series models producing the vast majority of statistically significant policy effects. However, results were moderately consistent in direction and magnitude across analyses, models, and outcomes. Taken together, differences in findings across outcomes suggests state policymakers may see a range of effects from introducing AP exam accountability indicators. Policymakers may see a small, positive increase in the trend of average state-level AP exam performance, an immediate decrease in average AP exam performance, an immediate short-term decrease in AP exam performance that is offset by a larger long-term increase, or no effects at all. Supporting contextual information and exploratory analyses revealed that several factors may contribute to the mixed findings, including but not limited to variation in the strength of AP accountability incentives, different indicator designs, and the presence of other types of state AP policies. Future research on AP accountability incentives should employ a rigorous mixed methods approach to further isolate the effects of AP accountability incentives and to provide needed evidence on how school leaders and teachers behave in response to the introduction of AP exam accountability indicators. Additionally, future research should examine the benefits and costs associated with introducing AP exam accountability indicators to determine how well public resources are being spent in the pursuit of school improvement.