We examine a natural experiment in Brazil in which similar students took the same standardized test as either a low-stakes school accountability exam or a high-stakes admission exam for the country's top universities. Using administrative data and a difference-in-differences design, we find that...

Teachers are increasingly being drawn from the lower parts of the general ability distribution, but it is not clear how this affects student achievement. We track the position of entering teachers in population-wide cognitive and non-cognitive ability distributions using school grades and draft...

We analyze teacher experience as a moderating factor for the effect of class size reduction on student achievement in the early grades using data from the Tennessee STAR experiment with random assignment of teachers and students to classes of different size. The analysis is motivated by the high...

Teachers are increasingly being drawn from the lower parts of the general ability distribution, but it is not clear how this affects student achievement. We track the position of entering teachers in population-wide cognitive and non-cognitive ability distributions using school grades and draft...

We document a substantial decline in the position of entering teachers in population-wide cognitive and non-cognitive ability distributions, as well as the upper-secondary school grade (GPA) distribution. Next, we estimate the causal impact on student achievement using matched student-teacher...

Does screening applicants using exams help or hurt the chances of lower-SES candidates? Because individuals from lower socioeconomic backgrounds fare, on average, worse than those from richer backgrounds in standardized tests, a common concern with this "meritocratic" approach is that it might...

Compensation of K-12 school principals, and the effect that it has on the performance of the schools they lead, has become a relevant policy debate in recent years. This study examines the relationship between principal salaries and student performance on Colorado Student Assessment Program...

According to the study of (Hanushek and Wößmann, 2007) it was found among others that the skills of the population – rather than mere school attainment – are powerfully related to individual earnings, to the distribution of income, and to economic growth. In the present paper author will...

We collect data on operations, targets and human resources management practices in over 1,800 schools educating 15-year-olds in eight countries. Overall, we show that higher management quality is strongly associated with better educational outcomes. The UK, Sweden, Canada and the US obtain the...

We study the effects of managerial practices in schools on students' outcomes. We measure managerial practices using the World Management Survey, a methodology that enables us to construct robust measures of management quality comparable across countries. We find substantial heterogeneity in...