{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.015089163237311385, 'fraction_numerical': 0.01646090534979424, 'mean_word_length': 5.822429906542056, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Assessing Assessments of School Performance

The 1999 Public Schools Accountability Act set forth the Academic Performance Index (API) to assess the performance of California's public schools. Under the Governor's Performance Awards program, California schools showing adequate improvement in API scores become eligible for state funding. This article investigates the rule used by California which defines awards eligibility and determines if this rule is consistent with the act of rewarding schools that are performing better than expected. In addition, we introduce and estimate a multilevel hierarchical model to determine those school districts and counties that demonstrated the best performance over the 2000–2001 period.