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ABSTRACT
While substantial school choice research focuses on student achievement outcomes, little has explored the mechanisms involved in producing such outcomes. We present a comparative analysis of private and public school principals using data from the School and Staffing Survey (SASS) 2011–2012. We add to the literature by examining the differences in private and public school principals’ abilities to influence important decisions at their schools from a nationally representative sample of 9,230 school principals. Results indicate that private school leadership exhibits more autonomy in influencing school level policies, perhaps explaining private school advantages.
Acknowledgments
We thank Robert Maranto from the Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas and Albert Cheng from Harvard University’s Program on Education Policy and Governance (PEPG) for comments on earlier drafts. We own all remaining flaws.
Notes
1. For more information, see http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/sass/pdf/1112/SASS2A.pdf (for public school principals) and http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/sass/pdf/1112/SASS2B.pdf (for private school principals).
2. Since the dependent variable is ordinal, we use ordered logit regression and report average marginal effects for the likelihood of reporting “major influence.”
3. Details can be found in the User’s Manual for the 2011–2012 Schools and Staffing Survey: https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/sass/methods0708.asp.