Using rich Texas administrative data, we estimate the impact of middle school principals on post-secondary schooling, employment, and criminal justice outcomes. The results highlight the importance of school leadership, though striking differences emerge in the relative importance of different skill dimensions to different outcomes. The estimates reveal large and highly significant effects of principal value-added to cognitive skills on the productive activities of schooling and work but much weaker effects of value-added to noncognitive skills on these outcomes.
In contrast, there is little or no evidence that middle school principals affect the probability a male is arrested and has a guilty disposition by raising cognitive skills but strong evidence that they affect these outcomes through their impacts on noncognitive skills, especially those related to the probability of an out-of-school suspension. In addition, the principal effects on the probability of engagement in the criminal justice system are much larger for Black than for non-Black males, corresponding to race differences in engagement with the criminal justice system.
Date
12.9.2024
, 11.15 a.m. till 12.00 p.m. (CET)
Venue
Institute for Employment Research
Regensburger Straße 104
90478 Nürnberg
Room Re100 706
or online via MS Teams
Registration
Researchers who like to participate, please send an e-mail to IAB.Colloquium@iab.de