School accountability and teacher mobility

We exploit a 2002 change in Florida’s school accountability system, and use regression discontinuity and difference-in-difference approaches, to study the effects of accountability pressure on teacher mobility. While school grading “shocks” do not affect mobility at most parts of the measured school quality distribution, there exists strong evidence that teachers are more likely to leave schools that have received a failing grade. Receipt of an “F” grade translates into differently higher turnover for the best teachers, measured by contributions to student test scores, at a school. These results are robust to a wide range of parametric and nonparametric model specifications.