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How Important are School Principals in the Production of Student Achievement?

Elizabeth Dhuey and Justin Smith (jusmith@wlu.ca)

CLSSRN working papers from Vancouver School of Economics

Abstract: As school leaders, principals can influence student achievement in a number of ways, such as: hiring and firing teachers, monitoring instruction, and maintaining student discipline, among others. We measure the effect of individual principals on gains in student math and reading achievement between grades four and seven. We estimate that a one standard deviation improvement in principal quality can boost student performance by approximately 0.2 standard deviations in both math and reading. We also show that principal experience does not exert a significant influence on student performance. Our results imply that isolating the most effective principals and allocating them accordingly between schools can have a significant positive effect on reducing achievement gaps.

Keywords: Economics of education; principals; education (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I20 I21 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 38 pages
Date: 2011-12-22, Revised 2011-12-23
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu, nep-lab and nep-ure
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (23)

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Related works:
Journal Article: How important are school principals in the production of student achievement? (2014) Downloads
Journal Article: How important are school principals in the production of student achievement? (2014) Downloads
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