Given the importance of teachers for students’ short- and long-term success, many education policies include mandates to match targeted students with “highly effective” teachers. An example is Michigan’s Read by Grade Three Law, which requires students eligible for retention to be assigned “highly effective” teachers. Using a regression discontinuity design, we study the assignments of “highly effective” teachers to students eligible for retention under the law. We find no evidence that these students were more likely to be assigned a “highly effective” teacher than their peers just above the eligibility cut-off. Approximately 15% of both retention-eligible and ineligible students just above the cut-off with a “highly effective” teacher in the same building and grade level were not assigned to a “highly effective” teacher.