We examine behavioral responses to an incentive program that offers high-performing teachers in ten school districts across the country $20,000 to transfer into the district's hardest-to-staff schools. We discuss behavioral responses to the program on high-performing teachers’ willingness to transfer (supply) and the effect of the transfer offer on the internal dynamics of the receiving schools (demand). We found low take-up rates among the 1,514 high-performing teachers who were offered the incentive, with minimal sorting on observable characteristics. Within the new schools, transfer teachers were less likely than their counterparts in a randomized control group to require mentoring and more likely to provide mentoring themselves. No significant differences occurred in school climate, collegiality, or the way in which students were assigned to teachers, but evidence indicates that principals may have strategically assigned existing teachers to grades in both treatment and control schools in response to the quality of the incoming teachers.

The Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP) is an influential and rapidly growing nationwide network of charter schools serving primarily disadvantaged minority students. Prominent elements of KIPP's educational model include high expectations for student achievement and behavior, and a substantial increase in time in school. KIPP is being watched closely by policy makers and educators as a possible model for urban education, but existing studies of KIPP's effects on students have been subject to methodological limitations, making them less than conclusive. We measure the achievement impacts of forty-one KIPP middle schools across the country, using propensity-score matching to identify traditional public school students with similar characteristics and prior-achievement histories as students who enter KIPP. We find consistently positive and statistically significant impacts of KIPP on student achievement, with larger impacts in math than reading. These impacts persist over four years following admission, and are not driven by attrition of low performers from KIPP schools.