Food for thought: the effects of school accountability plans on school nutrition

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Figlio, DN; Winicki, J
• 署名单位: State University System of Florida; University of Florida; National Bureau of Economic Research
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF PUBLIC ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0047-2727
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2003.10.007
• 发表日期: 2005
• 页码: 381-394
• 关键词: School accountability; testing; school nutrition; national school lunch program; standards of learning

摘要

With the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, school accountability is now federal law, continuing the recent trend of states implementing significant accountability systems for schools. This paper studies an unusual yet powerful school response to accountability systems. Using disaggregated school lunch menus from a random sample of school districts in Virginia, we find that schools threatened with accountability sanctions increase the caloric content of their lunches on testing days in an apparent attempt to boost short-term student cognitive performance. Moreover, we find that the schools that responded the most along these dimensions experienced the greatest improvements in standardized test scores. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.