Katherine McElroy

This paper estimates the long-run effects of school accountability on educational attainment by exploiting two sources of variation: staggered implementation of accountability across states and individuals’ exposure to accountability. I find 12 years of exposure to school accountability leads to an increase in the likelihood of graduating high school by 2.3 percentage points but has no statistically significant effect on college attendance or the likelihood of receiving a Bachelor's degree. However, racial heterogeneity shows Hispanic students experience a significant increase in the likelihood of attending college. I rule out changes in school expenditures and teacher characteristics as potential mechanisms and present suggestive evidence that schools are classifying more students as learning disabled. Lastly, accountability is more effective in conjunction with promotion gates.

This paper investigates how Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) eligibility affects food expenditures. A 2019 policy change in California granted previously ineligible Supplemental Security Income (SSI) recipients SNAP eligibility. Using the Consumer Expenditure Survey, we find that after the policy change, affected SSI recipients increased their "food at home" budget share between 2.5 to 4.3 percentage points ($120 to $206 per quarter). The SNAP effect on total food expenditures is dampened by a decrease in "food away from home" which SNAP benefits cannot be spent on.

Examining job transitions into management positions is empirically challenging because there is selection into the job, both by the employee and the employer. I take advantage of a performance-based pay scheme for teachers, assistant principals, and principals to study the relationship between salary and teacher transitions to the assistant principalship. Using a regression discontinuity design, I find teachers are more likely to become assistant principals or exit the district public school system when they receive an evaluation score placing them just below the cutoff of a higher evaluation bin. Just missing the threshold for a higher evaluation bin may affect teacher career decisions through channels such as motivation, demand-driven factors, and salary. I employ a difference-in-discontinuity methodology to isolate the effect of salary on job transitions and conclude the main result is driven by salary. Understanding factors that influence teachers' decisions to stay in teaching or switch to administration has important policy implications as schools balance between attracting effective leaders and retaining high quality teachers.