Randall Reback

The purpose of this project is to study whether the incentives built into the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) have a net positive impact on students' academic achievement, students' non-academic outcomes, and school resource allocation. Under NCLB, states annually determine whether public schools satisfy Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) based on the fraction of students demonstrating proficiency on a statewide exam. Public schools have strong incentives to satisfy AYP: failure triggers sanctio...