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How Does School Accountability Affect Teachers? Evidence from New York City
- Journal of Human Resources
- University of Wisconsin Press
- Volume 55, Number 1, Winter 2020
- pp. 76-118
- Article
- Additional Information
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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 on the basis of student achievement, I perform a regression discontinuity analysis and find evidence of the opposite effect. At the bottom end of the school grade distribution, lower accountability grades decrease teacher turnover and increase joining teachers’ quality. A likely channel is that accountability pressures increase principal effort at lower-graded schools, which teachers value. In contrast, at the top end of the school grade distribution, low accountability grades may negatively impact joining teachers’ quality.