How Does School Accountability Affect Teachers? Evidence from New York City

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, 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.