Working Paper: NBER ID: w24658
Authors: Rebecca Dizon-Ross
Abstract: Does holding schools accountable for student performance cause good teachers to leave low-performing schools? Using data from New York City, which assigns accountability grades to schools based on student achievement, I perform a regression discontinuity analysis and find evidence of the opposite effect. At the bottom end of the school grade distribution, I find that a lower accountability grade decreases teacher turnover and increases joining teachers’ quality. A likely channel is that accountability pressures induce increases in principal effort at lower-graded schools, especially among high-quality principals, and teachers value these changes. In contrast, at the top end of the school grade distribution, where accountability pressures are lower, low accountability grades may negatively impact joining teachers’ quality.
Keywords: school accountability; teacher turnover; New York City; education reform
JEL Codes: I2
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| Higher turnover (J63) | Negative impact on student achievement (I24) |
| Effective principals (M54) | Benefit low-performing schools (I24) |
| Lower accountability grade (I24) | Job desirability hypothesis (J23) |
| Lower accountability grade (I24) | Stigma hypothesis (J15) |
| Lower accountability grade (I24) | Decrease in teacher turnover (I21) |
| Lower accountability grade (H83) | Higher quality joining teachers (L15) |
| Lower accountability grade (I24) | Attract higher-quality joiners (L15) |