This article investigates the effect of schools’organizational features on teacher staffing decisions at thesecondary level cross-nationally. I examine the importanceof the principal’s administrative leadership style andschool-level autonomy in making staffing decisions tounderstand variation in assignments of out-of-field teachers(OFT) to teach mathematics and science. I conduct sec-ondary analysis based on a new international data setcompiled by the Organisation for Economic Co-operationand Development on lower-secondary school administra-tion and teachers in 15 countries. I utilize a country fixed-effects model to study the effect of different types oforganizational characteristics on the extent of reliance onout-of-field teaching in mathematics and science cross-nationally. The results indicate that the use of OFT is aschool-specific issue. Several school characteristics affectlevels of out-of-field teaching. After controlling for countryfixed effects, I do not find a systematic relationshipbetween the principal’s administrative leadership and theschool’s reliance on OFT. However, higher school-levelautonomy in making staffing decisions is significantlyassociated with lower reliance on out-of-field teaching.

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• The Relationship Between School Organizational Characteristicsand Reliance on Out-of-Field Teachers in Mathematicsand Science: Cross-National Evidence from TALIS 2008