The Effects of School Accountability on Teachers in Public and Private Schools: Evidence from Chile

Abstract This paper estimates the effects of a school accountability policy on year-to-year teacher mobility in publicly and privately managed low-performing schools in Chile. As school ranking depends on the institution's relative position according to a set of variables and their corresponding thresholds, we employ a multivariate regression discontinuity design to evaluate the impact of the policy on teacher mobility. Our findings reveal that teachers are generally more likely to leave low-performing schools, although this result varies by type of management. Teachers in public schools tend to transfer to other schools within the system, and those who do so are more likely to be working in two or more schools. Meanwhile, teachers in private schools are comparatively more likely to exit the system altogether, with mobility concentrated among low-productivity teachers. Despite these differences, the introduction of accountability did not induce new hires at either type of school.