Improving and Sustaining Management Practices in Public Schools: Evidence from Puerto Rico

Improvements in management practices can generate stunning productivity improvement in the private sector. Although their adoption in the education sector has been slow, management-level interventions have been shown to lead to improvements in school quality and students’ academic achievement. Adoption of these practices in the public sector is often not sustained long-term, necessitating further research on how to achieve this sustainably and at scale. The research team's collaboration with the Puerto Rico Department of Education (PRDE) experimentally evaluates the impact of a territory-wide principal management training program. We measure impacts on managerial practices by collecting detailed longitudinal data measuring short and long-term adoption. We also measure impacts on student achievement using standardized test scores and on COVID-19 school closure management. The study will investigate whether improvements in managerial practices can be implemented in schools at scale, their long-term sustainability, their effects on student learning, and their relevance to improving school management during crises.