How Accountability Pressure in Low-Rated Schools Leads to Long-Term Gains for Students

A new study led by the University of California, Riverside offers a surprisingly hopeful look at what can happen when underperforming high schools are pushed to improve. The research shows that when a school receives the state’s lowest performance rating—and is required to make concrete changes—the long-term benefits for students can be substantial. These benefits extend well beyond academics and into major life outcomes, including interactions with the criminal justice system.

This article walks through all the key details of the study, the methods used, what researchers discovered, and why these findings matter. To offer deeper value, it also includes additional context about school accountability systems, how they work, and why their impact has been debated for decades.

What the Study Examined

The research, led by Ozkan Eren, an economist and professor at UC Riverside, focuses on more than 54,000 public high school students who entered ninth grade in South Carolina between 2000 and 2005. What makes this study particularly meaningful is the long follow-up: researchers tracked students all the way into their early 30s.

To connect schooling with later outcomes, the team linked education records with data on arrests, incarceration, and participation in social welfare programs. By doing this, they were able to study not just short-term academic outcomes but long-term behavioral and economic ones.

The schools themselves were part of a statewide accountability system that assigned ratings from “excellent” to “unsatisfactory.” These ratings were based on factors like:

Graduation rates
Standardized test scores
Eligibility for merit-based scholarships

Schools at the bottom—specifically those receiving an unsatisfactory rating—faced increased oversight and were required to submit detailed improvement plans. This rating also came with the threat of consequences such as leadership changes or even the possibility of state takeover.

Importantly, the study aimed to isolate what happens because of receiving a failing rating, not just what happens at low-performing schools. To do that, researchers used a method called regression discontinuity, comparing schools that fell just below the cutoff for an unsatisfactory rating with those just above it. This approach creates a near-experimental condition where the schools on either side of the threshold are similar in every way except for the rating they received.

Key Findings: Reduced Criminal Involvement

One of the most striking results from the study is that attending a high school rated unsatisfactory actually made students less likely to encounter the criminal justice system as adults.

Students from these bottom-rated schools were:

Nearly 3 percentage points less likely to be arrested
Seeing an overall 12% reduction in arrests compared to students in schools just above the threshold
Also experiencing a reduction in incarceration, though those estimates were less precise than the arrest results

These findings challenge a common assumption that attending a low-performing school necessarily results in negative long-term consequences. Instead, this research suggests that accountability pressure, when targeted at the very bottom of the performance scale, can trigger meaningful reforms that ultimately help students in the long run.

No Major Changes in Welfare Program Participation

While the study found notable reductions in arrests and incarceration, it found no significant impact on whether students later enrolled in social welfare programs such as:

Food assistance
The Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program

This suggests that the accountability-driven school improvements may have been more influential on behavioral and environmental variables rather than on long-term economic self-sufficiency.

What Actually Changed in These Schools?

One of the most interesting aspects of this study is that the improvements in student outcomes did not require large increases in spending. The researchers found no major increases in:

School budgets
Teacher turnover
Principal replacement

This means the positive effects cannot be attributed simply to more resources or drastic staffing changes.

Instead, the researchers concluded that the rating-driven pressure led schools to make internal reforms—the kinds of adjustments that influence the school’s day-to-day functioning and overall atmosphere. These shifts are often referred to as improvements in school climate, which can include:

Stricter or clearer discipline systems
Better monitoring of student behavior
Increased engagement between teachers and students
More emphasis on academic expectations
A generally safer and more structured learning environment

Even in the short term, schools that were flagged as unsatisfactory saw measurable changes in their climate. Over time, these changes appeared to have a powerful cumulative effect, resulting in reduced criminal involvement years later.

Why This Study Stands Out

Many previous studies on accountability systems have focused primarily on short-term academic outcomes, such as test score gains or graduation rates. This study, however, pushes much further by analyzing outcomes that unfold over more than a decade. Its use of a robust method such as regression discontinuity also strengthens the argument that accountability pressure caused the improvements, rather than merely correlating with them.

Another important point is that this study emphasizes that the positive effects appear only at the bottom of the performance scale. Higher-rated schools—those in the B or A range—do not appear to change much in response to the accountability system, likely because they aren’t facing the same level of pressure or threat of intervention.

So while the findings show clear benefits for the lowest-rated schools, the authors caution that the results should not be broadly generalized to all schools or all accountability systems.

Understanding School Accountability Systems

To add more context, here’s a quick overview of how school accountability systems typically work in the United States.

What They Aim to Do

Accountability systems attempt to ensure that schools maintain a certain level of performance. They are designed to:

Identify struggling schools
Provide transparency for families
Incentivize improvements in instruction
Ensure equity across districts

Common Components

Most systems include:

Statewide standardized tests
Graduation and attendance data
Subgroup performance tracking
Ratings or grades assigned annually

Why They’re Controversial

Accountability systems have sparked debate for years because critics argue that they:

Overemphasize testing
Put pressure on teachers and administrators
Can lead to teaching-to-the-test
May stigmatize high-poverty schools

However, the new research suggests that when schools at the very bottom are compelled to reform, the results can be long-lasting and socially meaningful, particularly when it comes to reducing future criminal involvement.

The Bottom Line

This study provides a strong piece of evidence that carefully applied accountability pressure—not as punishment but as a push toward improvement—can help schools better serve their most vulnerable students. For the thousands of students who attended schools rated as unsatisfactory, this pressure translated into safer, more supportive school environments and a measurable reduction in later arrests.

While the authors note that these findings may not apply universally, the research opens the door to rethinking how accountability can be used to support—not just evaluate—schools that need help the most.

Research Paper:
School Accountability, Long-Run Criminal Activity, and Self-Sufficiency
https://doi.org/10.3368/jhr.0723-13034r1