Teachers are central for learning, but if they are civil servants, their management and hiring can be
affected by the political cycle. Using an administrative school-level panel data set across India, we
show that teacher transfers and the hiring of new teachers increase significantly after State
Assembly elections. The identification relies on the staggered and pre-determined timing of
elections across states. The restructuring can be harmful; test scores are up to 0.15 standard
deviations lower for children whose schooling coincides with the post-election phase. We conduct
various checks to establish the link between the two findings.