Do School Report Cards Produce Accountability Through the Ballot Box?∗

The authors ’ names are in alphabetical order, reflecting equal contributions. Public education has been transformed by the widespread adoption of account-ability systems that involve the dissemination of school and district performance information. Using data from Ohio, we examine if elections serve as one chan-nel through which these accountability systems might lead to improvements in educational quality. Using two identification strategies and a multitude of robustness checks, we find little evidence that an indication of poor student performance on widely disseminated state and federal performance metrics has an impact on school board turnover, the probability that incumbents win re-election, or superintendent tenure—all of which one would expect if the dissem-ination of performance information put electoral pressure on elected officials to improve student achievement