One goal of standards-based accountability is to align educator behaviors with the improvement of student achievement. Yet, prior work suggests that standards-based accountability has negatively affected some educational processes, such as narrowing the curriculum and reducing instructional quality. Panel data from middle grades math teachers across four urban districts from 2007-2011 are used to identify the causal effect of not making adequately yearly progress (AYP) in mathematics on the quality of middle grades math teacher instruction. The analytical strategy rests on various fixed effects. Analyses show instructional quality decreases the school year immediately following failure to make AYP in math, but some of the loss in instructional quality is recovered over time.