TY  - JOUR
AU  - Dee,Thomas
AU  - Jacob,Brian
TI  - The Impact of No Child Left Behind on Student Achievement
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 15531
PY  - 2009
Y2  - November 2009
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w15531
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w15531.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Thomas Dee
Stanford University
520 Galvez Mall, CERAS Building, 5th Floor
Stanford, CA 94305-3084
Tel: (650) 736-1258
Fax: (650) 723-9931
E-Mail: tdee@stanford.edu

Brian Jacob
Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy
University of Michigan
735 South State Street
Ann Arbor, MI 48109
Tel: 734-615-6994
Fax: NA
E-Mail: bajacob@umich.edu
AB  - The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act compelled states to design school-accountability systems based on annual student assessments. The effect of this Federal legislation on the distribution of student achievement is a highly controversial but centrally important question. This study presents evidence on whether NCLB has influenced student achievement based on an analysis of state-level panel data on student test scores from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). The impact of NCLB is identified using a comparative interrupted time series analysis that relies on comparisons of the test-score changes across states that already had school-accountability policies in place prior to NCLB and those that did not. Our results indicate that NCLB generated statistically significant increases in the average math performance of 4th graders (effect size = 0.22 by 2007) as well as improvements at the lower and top percentiles. There is also evidence of improvements in 8th grade math achievement, particularly among traditionally low-achieving groups and at the lower percentiles. However, we find no evidence that NCLB increased reading achievement in either 4th or 8th grade.
ER  -