Research

Job Market Paper

Principal Quality and Student Outcomes: Evidence from North Carolina 

Principals shape almost every aspect of schools, assigning students to classrooms and matching teachers and students with resources. This paper quantifies the impact of principal quality and documents the correlates of effective practices. Using a variance decomposition that exploits principal transitions across schools in the North Carolina public school system, I find that differences in principal quality explain about 5% of the variation in test scores. To identify effective principals, I construct and provide the first evidence that principal value-added estimates are forecast unbiased. I use these individual-level estimates to examine the correlates of value-added and the mechanisms through which principal effects operate. My results suggest that previous effective teaching strongly predicts subsequent principal value-added. To understand potential mechanisms, an event-study design around principal transitions reveals that more effective principals excel at attracting better teachers and retaining their best staff. Furthermore, they are more likely to assign their best teachers to larger classrooms which increases overall student learning. School survey data allow me to unpack why effective principals attract and retain their teachers. I document a robust relationship between value-added and various measures of leadership and teacher empowerment suggesting that test-score boosting principals also possess certain characteristics that make them more appealing.   

Work in Progress

The Impact of Tenure Removal on Teacher's Labor Supply Responses