Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Passage of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) act was the culmination of state-level efforts to measure and rate school performance in order to elevate school quality. As an early adopter of school accountability, the state of Texas has been at the forefront of this movement, and our research investigates the relationship between principal labor market outcomes and measured school performance. We are particularly interested in two questions. First, which measures of performance are associated with labor-market success? By focusing on the pass-rate rather than a measure of achievement associated more closely with learning and achievement growth, the NCLB legislation and Texas accountability system emphasize flawed performance metrics that systematically mis-measure school effectiveness in ways that likely punish schools serving disadvantaged students. Despite the flaws in the existing evaluation structure, it is important to understand the strength of the relationship between principal labor-market success and both measures based on the pass rate and those more closely related to achievement growth and learning. The second question focuses on stakeholder use of information. Using regression discontinuity methods, we investigate whether labor market outcomes differ for two principals whose schools have almost identical pass rates but who fall on opposite sides of a ratings boundary.