Does Regulating Entry Requirements Lead to More Effective Principals?

Anecdotal evidence points to the importance of school principals, but the limited existing research has neither provided consistent results nor indicated any set of essential characteristics of effective principals.  This paper exploits extensive student-level panel data across six states to investigate both variations in principal performance and the relationship between effectiveness and key certification factors.  While principal effectiveness varies widely across states, there is little indication that regulation of the background and training of principals yields consistently effective performance.  Having prior teaching or management experience is not related to our estimates of principal value-added.

This is an updated version of the paper originally titled "Path to the Principalship and Value Added: A Cross-state Comparison of Elementary and Middle School Principals", released in January 2019.