States 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.

中文翻译：

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学校绩效，责任制和豁免改革：来自路易斯安那州的证据

要求获得联邦豁免《不让任何孩子落后法》的国家对指定的“重点学校”进行改革，这会造成成绩差距。我们研究了路易斯安那州这种“差别责任制”改革的绩效影响。这些重点学校改革强调了学校需求评估和统一的技术援助。这些改革也可能具有独特的强大功能，因为它们与基于字母的学校评分系统相关联。我们在尖锐的回归间断（RD）设计中研究了这些改革的影响。我们发现，在每隔三年的时间里，路易斯安那州的重点学校改革对学校表现没有可衡量的影响。我们讨论的证据表明，这些发现反映了政策改革的疲倦以及州和地方一级实施质量低下。