There is no shortage of research into the impacts of school and district accountability systems on education-related student outcomes. But a recently published paper adds a new twist by examining the criminal activity and economic self-sufficiency of adults who were impacted by South Carolina’s accountability efforts when they were high school students.
Introduced in 2000, South Carolina’s accountability system evaluates all public schools according to a set of continuous performance metrics that are then converted into five discrete school ratings—unsatisfactory, below average, average, good, and excellent. The state uses these labels to reward and sanction schools. High ratings are associated with additional funding, while schools that receive low ratings face a range of possible consequences that include leadership change, restructuring, and state takeover. The worse the rating, the more disruptive the state’s intervention. The researchers assert that South Carolina’s system is designed to resist any potential efforts by schools to “game” the outcome by focusing on and improving non-academic rating areas (like attendance or graduation rates) or by excluding low performers from testing in high-value grades or subjects.
The researchers used administrative data that allowed them to connect former students to state databases in which they appear as adults. They employed a quasi-experimental design using regression discontinuity and local randomization. The full sample comprised 160,000 students who were first-time ninth graders in the 2000–2001 to 2002–03 school years and attended 194 different high schools across the state. The sample included slightly more males than females; 41 percent of students were Black and 55 percent White. As in most places, school ratings correlate negatively with the percentage of Black students attending and with the fraction of free-lunch-eligible students. All students were followed—to the extent that they appeared—in three datasets: the South Carolina State Law Enforcement Division’s detailed arrest records from 2000 to 2017 (including demographic information on the arrestees, offense data, and the type of crime committed), incarceration records from the state’s Department of Corrections, and administrative records from the South Carolina Department of Social Services regarding enrollment in social welfare programs. Students were followed beyond high school in three cohorts through approximately age thirty-four. Treatment effects were calculated based on the first high school they attended.
The topline finding is that state intervention in low-performing schools was beneficial to students’ later-life outcomes. Specifically, students in schools that were rated just below the cutoff for intervention were 1.8 percentage points less likely to be arrested in adulthood in comparison to students who attended schools that were just above the cutoff. These impacts were nearly double for females than for males. The researchers found null effects on future incarceration, likely due to the arrest data being largely driven by alcohol and drug-related crimes—offenses typically not associated with long-term incarceration.
Although limited, some positive impacts of state accountability were also seen in the study’s measure of future economic stability. To wit: Female students attending schools with marginally lower accountability ratings around the intervention cutoff were 4.2 percentage points less likely to enroll in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance food stamp program (a.k.a. SNAP) as adults than their female peers from higher-rated schools. There were null effects observed on females’ enrollment in the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program, and for males’ enrollment in either SNAP or TANF. The researchers note that the SNAP finding may be even more significant than it appears. Since the average monthly SNAP benefit can make up around one-fourth of a recipients’ total gross income, students positively impacted by school improvement efforts as adults and not relying on SNAP benefits likely have higher overall incomes than their SNAP-enrolled peers. Although this is speculation on the part of the researchers rather than something observed in the data.
Digging into mechanisms, the researchers find evidence of a simple and direct explanation: Experiencing state-mandated interventions appears to prompt schools to increase their academic standards and to boost the academic success of their students. The researchers do not break down the specific interventions experienced in any given school, although the worse the original performance, the more thorough a change the state required. The data do show more students being retained in low-rated schools, but without any net change in grade progression rates, as compared to higher-rated schools. This, coupled with the researchers’ assertion that South Carolina’s system resisted gaming, seems to indicate a concentrated effort to remediate students to grade-level standards—as quickly as possible. The data also show a consequent rise in exit exam scores and academic eligibility for the state’s LIFE college scholarship program. In short, better achievement in school leads to less negative life impacts as adults. And ironclad disruptive accountability is a path to get better achievement outcomes. Simple.
SOURCE: Ozkan Eren et al., “School Accountability, Long-Run Criminal Activity, and Self-Sufficiency,” NBER Working Papers (August 2023).
