The Impact of High-Stakes Testing in Chicago on Student Achievement in Promotional Gate Grades

STANDARDS and accountability policies have become increasingly popular strategies among school reformers. In 1984, South Carolina became the first state to introduce a school performance incentive program where schools are ranked on the basis of student test scores and top schools receive financial rewards (Clotfelter & Ladd,1996). Since then many states and districts have implemented policies, which focus on school outputs, mostly achievement test scores, to press teachers and administrators to improve performance. There is some evidence that such school-based accountability programs have resulted in higher achievement (Ladd, 1999). Many states have also moved to set minimum standards for high school graduation such as requiring students to pass exit exams. While school-based accountability programs have become fairly widespread, until the mid-333 1990's few localities had linked students' grade level promotional decisions to performance on standardized tests. In 1996, Chicago began a national trend when it coupled a new school-level accountability program with an accountability initiative with high-stakes consequences for students. This widely heralded effort to " end social promotion " requires third, sixth, and eighth graders to meet minimum test score cutoffs in reading and mathematics in order to be promoted to the next grade. Over the past five years, virtually every major school system and many states such as North Carolina and South Carolina have instituted elements of the Chicago policy. Policy initiatives aimed at ending social promotion have attracted considerable controversy. Proponents of high-stakes testing for students argue that such policies will motivate students to This article analyzes the impact of high-stakes testing in Chicago on student achievement in grades targeted for promotional decisions. Using a three-level Hierarchical Linear Model, we estimate achievement value added in gate grades (test-score increases over and above that predicted from a student's prior growth trajectory) for successive cohorts of students and derive policy effects by comparing value added pre-and postpolicy. Test scores in these grades increased substantially following the introduction of high-stakes testing. The effects are larger in the 6th and 8th grades and smaller in the 3rd grade in reading. Effects are also larger in previously low-achieving schools. In reading, students with low skills experienced the largest improvement in learning gains in the year prior to testing, while students with skills closer to their grade level experienced the greatest benefits in mathematics. work harder and encourage parents to carefully monitor their child's progress. The approach in Chicago, moreover, which provides extra …