Departamento de Economía

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"No Child Left Behind" and the effectiveness of professional development programs on students’ performance : evidence from schools in Missouri
(2013-08) Ajzenman, Nicolás Matías
Among other reforms, the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) included special funding for Professional Development Programs, with the particular objective of enhancing the performance of the neediest schools. In this paper, we evaluate for the first time a state-wide Professional Development program in Elementary and High Schools in the State of Missouri. Using matching and Diff-in-Diff techniques, we find that the Program seemed to have a positive and significant effect in the Math scores (annual standardized tests) for almost all the evaluated grades in the High School level (+2% to 4.7%) during 2011-12. However, no significant effects were found in Math or Science in Primary School. The results are particularly relevant because the NCLB Act clearly establishes automatic mechanisms to punish or reward schools using our outcome as the decision variable. The Professional Development Programs aim to improve the children scores in the standardized tests to fulfill the NCLB requirements.