The Role of State Education Regulation: Evidence from the Texas Districts of Innovation Statute

October 2021

Traditional public schools in the United States must comply with a variety of regulations on educational inputs like teacher certification, maximum class sizes, and restrictions on staff contracts. Absent regulations, policymakers fear that troubled districts would make inappropriate decisions that would harm students. However, it is also possible that strict regulations hinder schools from optimizing student learning. This paper tests the salience of these two hypotheses within the context of a widespread deregulation effort in Texas which allows traditional public school districts to claim District of Innovation status and opt out of regulations not related to health, safety, and civil rights. Using a novel dataset of administration data merged with implementation information scraped from district websites, I estimate the impact of District of Innovation status with a difference-in-differences strategy where later implementers act as the comparison group for early implementers. I find that, despite the breadth of regulations exempted, regulatory autonomy does not significantly impact either math or reading achievement nor does it impact hiring or class sizes. Together, the results offer strong evidence against the hypothesis that regulation hinders school improvement and suggests that state input regulations play only a limited role in determining school decision-making or student achievement.

Keywords

education regulation, state policy, certification, Districts of Innovation

Education level

K-12 Education

Topics

Policy, Politics, and Governance