Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

A common criticism of NCLB was the failure to align high school student achievement with postsecondary admission standards. Copious research exists on the effects of NCLB on K-12 outcomes, especially with respect to test scores. Although the evidence is mixed, regardless, test scores do not necessarily translate to long-term education outcomes. This is a classic problem in which an agent’s efforts to avoid sanction may not match all of a principal’s desired behavior or outcomes. Without better alignment between K-12 and postsecondary standards, NCLB was not expected to have a positive impact, if any, on college outcomes.

In 2012, Kentucky was one of ten states to be granted an ESEA waiver from NCLB to be replaced by state-specific programs. Implementation of Kentucky’s program, Unbridled Learning, was scheduled to begin for the 2012-2013 academic year, but actual implementation was delayed until February 2013. For schools that were under NCLB sanctions, the waiver represented a significant change in policy relative to other Kentucky schools.

Rather than study the effect of ESEA waivers, which some studies have done thus far with regard to K-12 outcomes, this study intends to answer the question “What were the effects of NCLB sanctions on college outcomes?” In theory, the punitive nature of the NCLB sanctions applied considerably more pressure on Title 1 schools to meet standards misaligned with postsecondary requirements compared to non-Title 1 schools performing at a similar level. Given a non-trivial disconnect between K-12 accountability and college, if sanctions induce schools to focus efforts to avoid future sanctions, then those schools would have worse college outcomes than a comparable group not subject to punitive sanctions.

The waiver represents a quasi-experiment. Pre-waiver, a subset of Kentucky schools failing to meet standards was subject to punitive sanctions, while another subset of low-performing schools was not. Post-waiver, punitive sanctions were removed. While the pre- and post-waiver models differed in some ways, it should be noted that the accountability mechanisms were drastically different for previously sanctioned schools, but relatively similar to what non-NCLB-sanctioned schools experienced.

To estimate the effect of NCLB sanctions on college outcomes, a triple difference-in-differences strategy is employed. Using data aggregated at the high school level from several Kentucky public reports, this study examines the effect of NCLB sanctions on college-going rates and the difference between high school and first year of college GPAs for academic year cohorts graduating during 2010-2014. Preliminary results of only a diff-in-diff model within Kentucky do not support that NCLB sanctions had a significant effect on college outcomes. Data from a non-waiver state is being collected to serve as a third difference in order to strengthen the validity of the results.

As states continue to design and implement their own accountability models in this post-NCLB era, having more specific knowledge regarding the effects of punitive sanctions on longer-term outcomes is important. Linking K-12 data with postsecondary data enables such analyses.