School Accountability and Principal Mobility: How No Child Left Behind Affects the Allocation of School Leaders

TLDR: Acemoglu et al. as discussed by the authors empirically evaluated the economic importance of principal mobility in response to accountability by analyzing how the implementation of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) in North Carolina affected principal mobility across North Carolina schools and how it reshaped the distribution of high-performing principals across low and highperforming schools.

Abstract: The move toward increased school accountability may substantially affect the career risks that school leaders face without providing commensurate changes in pay. Since effective school leaders likely have significant scope in choosing where to work, these uncompensated risks may undermine the efficacy of accountability reforms by limiting the ability of low-performing schools to attract and retain effective leaders. This paper empirically evaluates the economic importance of principal mobility in response to accountability by analyzing how the implementation of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) in North Carolina affected principal mobility across North Carolina schools and how it reshaped the distribution of high-performing principals across lowand high-performing schools. Using value-added measures of principal performance and variation in pre-period student demographics to identify schools that are likely to miss performance targets, I show that NCLB decreases average principal quality at schools serving disadvantaged students by inducing more able principals to move to schools less likely to face NCLB sanctions. These results are consistent with a model of principal-school matching in which school districts are unable to compensate principals for the increased likelihood of sanctions at schools with historically low-performing students. ∗I am very grateful to Daron Acemoglu, Leila Agha, Josh Angrist, David Autor, Esther Duflo, David Figlio, Brigham Frandsen, Michael Greenstone, Matt Notowidigdo, Amanda Pallais, Parag Pathak, and numerous participants at the MIT Labor Lunch for helpful comments and suggestions. All errors are my own. †Northwestern University, Kellogg School of Management