Election in schools: an analysis of principal’s election on the students’ proficiency levels in the state of Bahia

Abstract

The main goal of this paper is to analyze the school’s principal’s election on the students’ proficiency levels. We compare the school’s proficiency between state and city schools in Bahia, where a selection by election was implemented only in city schools (the control group), after 2008. The databases used are Prova Brasil 2007 (before the change), 2009 and 2011. Our results shows that in general there were no gains on mean proficiency levels both in Mathematics and in Portuguese exams due to principals' elections, and, when this effect was significant it was negative – only for Mathmatics in the difference-in-difference model for the 2007-2011 period. We also documented a reduction in attainment and dropout rates.