Assessing School Assessment.

In 1999, Florida instituted a performance-based school accountability program for K-12 public schools that tied state funds to a formula heavily weighted towards standardized test scores. This paper discusses the educational and political issues in the debate and then quantitatively compares the stated goals with the program's actual award money flows through a combination of univariate and multivariate measures. This case study of the elementary schools in Jacksonville, Florida finds that the new system allocated public funds with a bias against predominantly African- American and poor neighborhoods while not necessarily meeting its own objectives of encouraging better teaching. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]