High-stakes exams provide students with incentives to perform well. This paper uses a reform-induced recoding of grades from completed exams, which caused variation in high school students’ grade point average (GPA), to identify students’ behavioral responses to changes in high-stakes grades. The results show that students who were downgraded by the recoding performed better on subsequent assessments and worked less for pay during high school. Students with downgraded grades were also somewhat more likely to enroll in college. As the recoding did not convey information on academic performance, these results emphasize that changes in incentives are important in understanding students’ responses to high-stakes grades. There is no evidence that the recoding algorithm predicts outcomes for nonaffected cohorts.

中文翻译：

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高风险成绩和学生行为

高风险的考试为学生提供了表现良好的动力。本文使用改革引发的已完成考试成绩重新编码，这会导致高中学生的平均绩点 (GPA) 发生变化，以确定学生对高风险成绩变化的行为反应。结果表明，被重新编码降级的学生在随后的评估中表现更好，并且在高中期间工作更少。成绩下降的学生也更有可能进入大学。由于重新编码没有传达关于学业成绩的信息，这些结果强调激励的变化对于理解学生对高风险成绩的反应很重要。没有证据表明重新编码算法可以预测未受影响的队列的结果。