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This paper considers whether high schools in competitive environments use grade inflation to attract and retain families, perhaps in addition to more constructive responses. Two measures of grade inflation are used: the cutoffs used by each school to assign a letter grade to a percent score; and high school GPA after controlling for test scores, a rich set of student and school characteristics, and (for a subset) college GPA. Two measures of competition are used: the enrollment-based concentration of school districts in metropolitan areas, and an instrument for this concentration. In both OLS and IV, increased competition significantly affects grade cutoffs: a one standard deviation increase in competition results in about a 0.12 to 0.18 standard deviation fall in the grade cutoffs (ceteris paribus, lower cutoffs yield higher grades). However, in both OLS and IV, competition does not significantly affect the actual assigned grades as measured by GPA. This pattern of results suggests that school administrators under competitive pressure may ease grade standards, but that teachers may re-adjust their scoring to leave actual grades relatively unchanged. (Contains 7 tables, 1 figure and 4 footnotes.)

This study investigates why teachers, identified by their school principal as being leaders or having leadership potential, chose not to become school principals. At a time in which the literature is reporting a shortage of qualified applicants for school administrative positions the identified reasons most cited by teacher leaders include testing/accountability pressures too great, job generally too stressful, too much time required, and societal problems make it difficult to focus on instruction. The key factors for teacher leaders choosing not to pursue a career in school administration are categorized as stress and time demands are too great. (Contains 5 tables.)