Seminars 2009 — Abstracts

Friday, March 27

Speaker: Mick Coelli, Melbourne

Title: Leadership Effects: School Principals and Student Outcomes

Abstract: We identify the effect of individual high school principals on two student outcome measures: high school graduation rates and grade 12 English final exam scores. A unique administrative data set of all students entering grade 12 in the Canadian province of British Columbia from 1995 to 2004 is employed. Many high school principals were rotated across schools by school districts during this period, permitting the isolation of the impact of school principals from the effect of schools. We identify a lower bound estimate of the variance of the idiosyncratic effect of high school principals on graduation rates using a semi-parametric technique that employs within school variation in principals only. We also employ a dynamic model of unobserved school principal effects to allow for changing influences of school principals over time. We find evidence of heterogeneity in school principal quality, indicating one particular dimension by which schools can affect student outcomes.