Abstract
Do better-managed school provide improved outcomes for their students? I combine detailed administrative data on student academic and non-cognitive outcomes with an instrumental variable design to evaluate a recent policy reform in Chile that introduced State-based management in replacement of district-based governance. I show that the reform increased test scores by 0.046-0.052 standard deviations in Mathematics and by 0.032-0.052 standard deviations in Reading. Additionally, I provide evidence for the negative impact on students' learning ability, with a reduction of 0.028-0.046 standard deviations. No evidence is found regarding other non-cognitive outcomes. These findings highlight that improved school management can raise academic achievement, but not without potential trade-offs in students’ non-cognitive development due to plausible increased academic stringency and perceived difficulty.