Does a teacher's perception of school management predict student achievement?

Abstract

This paper investigates the relationship between school management and leadership and Brazilian students’ academic performance in Portuguese and mathematics using a unique longitudinal dataset tracking elementary school students. Drawing on measures of management based on teachers’ perceptions of principals’ leadership and managerial practices, we control for student, teacher, and school fixed effects. We find that perceived school management and leadership are positively associated with achievement in Portuguese, but no association is found for mathematics. We also investigate the components of the school management index and find heterogeneous effects. Differences in school management and leadership may contribute to dissimilarities in student achievement across schools.