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The study analyzes Louisiana’s “differentiated accountability” Focus School reforms, which combined school-needs assessments, aligned technical assistance, and a letter-based school-rating system. Using a sharp regression-discontinuity design over three years, the analysis finds no measurable improvements in school performance, suggesting reform fatigue and weak implementation quality at state and local levels.",{"@graph":69,"@context":122},[70,84,105],{"@type":71,"itemListElement":72},"BreadcrumbList",[73,77,79,82],{"item":74,"name":75,"@type":76,"position":8},"https://docshare.wps.com","Home","ListItem",{"item":78,"name":9,"@type":76,"position":14},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/",{"item":80,"name":40,"@type":76,"position":81},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/research-report/",3,{"item":83,"name":65,"@type":76,"position":19},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/school-performance-accountability-and-waiver-reforms-evidence-from-louisiana/602728/",{"url":83,"name":65,"@type":85,"image":86,"author":91,"headline":65,"publisher":94,"fileFormat":97,"inLanguage":63,"description":67,"dateModified":98,"datePublished":99,"encodingFormat":97,"isAccessibleForFree":100,"interactionStatistic":101},"DigitalDocument",{"url":87,"@type":88,"width":89,"height":90},"https://docshare.wps.com/thumbnails/school-performance-accountability-and-waiver-reforms-evidence-from-louisiana/602728.png","ImageObject",300,407,{"name":92,"@type":93},"dabgoudw","Person",{"url":74,"name":95,"@type":96},"DocShare","Organization","application/pdf","2026-10-30","2026-10-15",true,{"@type":102,"interactionType":103,"userInteractionCount":24},"InteractionCounter",{"@type":104},"ViewAction",{"@type":106,"mainEntity":107},"FAQPage",[108,114,118],{"name":109,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":111},"What reforms were required for Focus Schools under NCLB waivers?","Question",{"text":112,"@type":113},"States receiving waivers had to implement “differentiated accountability” reforms that identified both overall low-performing schools and Priority/Focus Schools contributing to achievement gaps, targeting them for intervention.","Answer",{"name":115,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":116},"How does the study estimate the causal effect of Focus School reforms in Louisiana?",{"text":117,"@type":113},"It uses a sharp regression-discontinuity design based on how Louisiana assigned schools to Focus School status using a baseline performance measure, focusing on traditional public schools.",{"name":119,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":120},"What were the main findings on school performance and student test scores?",{"text":121,"@type":113},"Over three years, the reforms show no measurable impact on school performance or student test scores compared with other low-performing schools, with some negative effects that are largely not statistically significant.","https://schema.org",{"og:url":83,"og:type":124,"og:title":65,"og:site_name":95,"og:description":67},"article",{"robots":126,"canonical":83},"index,follow",{"doc_id":128,"site_id":62},602728,1792209329,{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":131},{"doc_id":128,"user_id":132,"nickname":92,"user_avatar":133,"doc_module":4,"category_id":39,"category_name":40,"doc_title":65,"doc_description":67,"doc_content":134,"file_id":135,"file_url":136,"file_type":137,"file_size":138,"view_count":24,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":8,"is_downloadable":8,"audit_status":8,"page_count":139,"language":140,"language_code":63,"site_id":62,"html_lang":63,"table_of_contents":141,"faqs":142,"seo_title":143,"seo_description":67,"update_tm":144,"read_time":145},3985747860484,"https://ap-avatar.wpscdn.com/davatar_276721f389ce27ea32af1340a28f341c","Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis September 2019, Vol. 41, No. 3, pp. 316–349 DOI: 10.3102/0162373719849944  \n[Article reuse guidelines:sagepub.com/journals-permissions](Article reuse guidelines:sagepub.com/journals-permissions)[ ](Article reuse guidelines:sagepub.com/journals-permissions)© 2019 AERA. [http://eepa.aera.net](http://eepa.aera.net)  \nSchool Performance, Accountability, and Waiver Reforms:  \nEvidence From Louisiana  \nThomas S. Dee  \nElise Dizon-Ross  \nStanford University  \nStates that receive federal waivers to the No Child Left Behind Act were required to implement reforms in designated “Focus Schools” that contribute to achievement gaps. We examine the performance effects of such “differentiated accountability” reforms in Louisiana. These Focus School reforms emphasized school-needs assessments and aligned technical assistance. These reforms may have also been uniquely high-powered because they were linked to a letter-based school-rating system. We examine the impact of these reforms in a sharp regression-discontinuity (RD) design. We find that, over each of 3 years, Louisiana’s Focus School reforms had no measurable impact on school performance. We discuss evidence that these findings reflect policy reform fatigue and poor quality of implementation at the state and local level.  \nKeywords: achievement, accountability, policy, school/teacher effectiveness, school turnaround, econometric analysis, regression discontinuity  \nFor over a decade, one of the key elements offederal education policy has been a focus on trying to improve outcomes for chronically underperforming schools and students through the use of accountability systems. Under the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act, the federal government mandated test-based accountability reforms that, for the first time, would identify the achievement of individual subgroups of students and sanction those schools that failed to make progress improving the outcomes of their lowest performing students. The worst performing schools faced the option of complete restructuring (i.e., school turnaround) or closure. The law was scheduled for revision in 2007, but with Congress unable to collectively reauthorize a new version of NCLB, the Department of Education in 2011 introduced flexibility waivers for which states could apply to avoid being held to the strictest requirements of the law. In exchange, states had to implement a set of reforms, one component of which was a system of “differentiated” accountability that would identify both overall low-performing  \nschools and schools contributing to achievement gaps, known respectively as Priority and Focus Schools, and target them for intervention. The majority of states applied and received a waiver.  \nIn this article, we examine Focus School reforms conducted under the NCLB waiver in Louisiana. Louisiana’s implementation of this signature federal achievement gap reform is uniquely interesting because it coincided with a state-level consequential accountability mechanism that has been shown to be effective elsewhere (i.e., school letter grades) . The treatment contrast that we study in Louisiana is a simultaneous combination of both Focus School and letter grade reforms, which is arguably a stronger treatment than the waivers themselves required. Indeed, by incorporating the use of a letter grade system already being developed at the state level into its fulfillment of the waiver requirements, Louisiana effectively created a Focus School treatment that appeared distinctly meaningful relative to Focus treatments in other states. Louisiana is also unusual in that their reforms  \nSchool Performance and Accountability  \nidentified Focus Schools based on an overall performance measure rather than subgroup specific measures; however, the high levels of school segregation by race, ethnicity, and income in the state effectively maintained that the policy was equity-focused.  \nWe use a regression discontinuity (RD) for our anal","cbCaifPgreQ8matx","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaifPgreQ8matx","pdf",1247237,34,"English","# School Performance, Accountability, and Waiver Reforms: Evidence From Louisiana\n## Focus Schools under NCLB Flexibility Waivers\n## Identification Strategy and Regression Discontinuity Results\n## Implications for Future Accountability Systems","[{\"question\":\"What reforms were required for Focus Schools under NCLB waivers?\",\"answer\":\"States receiving waivers had to implement “differentiated accountability” reforms that identified both overall low-performing schools and Priority/Focus Schools contributing to achievement gaps, targeting them for intervention.\"},{\"question\":\"How does the study estimate the causal effect of Focus School reforms in Louisiana?\",\"answer\":\"It uses a sharp regression-discontinuity design based on how Louisiana assigned schools to Focus School status using a baseline performance measure, focusing on traditional public schools.\"},{\"question\":\"What were the main findings on school performance and student test scores?\",\"answer\":\"Over three years, the reforms show no measurable impact on school performance or student test scores compared with other low-performing schools, with some negative effects that are largely not statistically significant.\"}]","School Performance, Accountability, and Waiver Reforms: Evidence From Louisiana | PDF",1792095136,86]