Exploring Complete School Effectiveness via Quantile Value-Added

Revista de análisis económico, 2014

We use recent unconditional quantile regression methods (UQR) to study the distributive effects of education in Argentina. Standard methods usually focus on mean effects, or explore distributive effects by either making stringent modeling assumptions, and/or through counterfactual decompositions that require several temporal observations. An empirical case shows the flexibility and usefulness of UQR methods. Our application for the case of Argentina shows that education contributed positively to increased inequality in Argentina, mostly due to the effect of strongly heterogeneous effects of education on earnings.

Colombia applies two mandatory National State tests every year. The first, known as Saber 11, is applied to students who finish the high school cycle, whereas the second, called Saber Pro, is applied to students who finish the higher education cycle. In this paper, the result obtained by a student on the Saber 11 exam along with his/her gender and socioeconomic stratum are our independent variables while the Saber Pro outcome is our dependent variable. We compare the results of two statistical models for the Saber Pro exam. The first model, multi-linear regression or ordinary least squares (OLS), produces an overall well fitted result but is highly inaccurate for some students. The second model, quantile regression (QR), weights the population according to their quantile groups. OLS minimizes the errors for the students whose Saber Pro result is close to the mean (a process known as estimation in the mean) while QR can estimate a value in the θ -quantile for every 0 < θ < 1. We show that QR is more accurate than OLS and reveal the unknown behavior of the socioeconomic stratum, the gender, and the initial academic endowments (estimated by the Saber 11 exam) for each quantile group.

There are countless estimates of the average returns to education which looks at the effect of an additional year of schooling on the conditional mean distribution of salaries. Recent international works suggest that there are variations from the average return to education across the population. That is why in this paper we examine this possibility for the case of Argentina over a ten year period. We estimate returns to schooling at different quantiles of the conditional distribution of wages using quantile regression method. We test whether there is individual heterogeneity in returns to education and find that: over time, while males have higher returns to schooling at the higher quantile, women’s returns are highest at the lowest quantile. The evidence is suggesting that while lower ability women may benefit more from schooling the reverse is true for men. Our findings have potential implications for the expansion of educational opportunities in Argentina.

depeco.econo.unlp.edu.ar

I. Introduction Argentina has one of the most developed education systems in the Americas. Indicators show that despite the country's uneven economic crisis, school enrollment rates remain high. Educational advances began early in Argentina following the Constitution of 1853. Prominent were the efforts of Domingo Sarmiento, the fourth president of Argentina. Sarmiento set the guidelines for the modern education system in the latter half of the nineteenth century, pushing through reforms that supported school expansion for all citizens. The literacy rate rose from 33 percent in 1869 to nearly 50 percent by the turn of the century. Average years of schooling of the population are currently 8.5, significantly higher than the regional average of 5.9 years. Argentina also compares well with East and Central Europe and East Asia, where average educational attainment is 8.4 years and 7.6 years (Barro and Lee 2000). Given this rapid growth in enrollment rates it is critical to consider what has happened to rates of return to schooling. There is a relatively large literature that has focused on estimating returns to schooling in Argentina since the mid-1980s. In 1985, in Buenos Aires, the labor force averaged 11.1 years of schooling and the private rate of return to another year of schooling was 9.2 percent (Kugler and Psacharopoulos 1989). Social rates of return were 1 JEL Classification: I21, J31.

School value-added studies have largely demonstrated the effects of socio-economic and demographic characteristics of the schools and the pupils on performance in standardised tests. Traditionally, these studies have assessed the variation coming only from the schools and the pupils. However, recent studies have shown that the analysis of academic performance could significantly benefit from additional complexity in the model structure, incorporating non-hierarchical and unexplored levels of variation. Using data on secondary students from the Chilean National Pupil Database (2004–2006), this study shows how the traditional value-added models fall short in addressing the complex phenomenon of academic performance, because they largely overestimate school effects. A 4-level contextualised value-added model for progress in Mathematics was implemented and shown to avoid the masking of classroom and locality effects found in the traditional models. We also analyse the effects of importa...

2007

Education plays an important role in the economic and social development of countries. Myriad studies show that education is one of the best ways to offer increased socioeconomic opportunities, social mobility and wages. Not only is universal education important but more significant is the quality of the education. Traditionally, educational policy looks to increase resources, a practice that has not empirically demonstrated satisfactory results. When addressing the problem from an economic standpoint, scholars consider why some schools are "better" than others and examine whether school administration influences results. In 1962, Milton Friedman introduced the voucher system into public education. Vouchers are simply the introduction of incentives as market forces, creating competition to improve educational results. In other words, introducing these incentives creates competition in student recruitment, directly influenced by the academic results of the school-ideally allowing only those institutions with good results to survive "in the market" and closing those schools that cannot "compete" against higher-quality establishments. Unfortunately, sufficient data do not exist to endorse the assertion that vouchers yet impact "the market" in this form. However, I will use the empirical evidence that the Chilean case provides and try to determine if this voucher system works as the theory claims. This study will help to interpret this system, the operation of free choice and how the market forces act to increase the quality of education. Three types of variables exist and are used to explain the educational results of each student; they are the individual and family characteristics as well as the characteristics of the educational establishment. Many variables previously mentioned are endogenous. One of the most important variables for this analysis is the selection of the school, and therefore the traditional mechanism of ordinary least square (OLS) will bias the results. However, by predicting the probabilities of selecting a particular educational establishment, using instrumental variables, and then estimating a two stage least-square model, the bias problem will disappear. The article will be organized in the following way: Section I: Introduction, section II will describe the Chilean education system. Section III describes the dataset and the methodology will be explained. Section IV describes the data and results and later on finally, section V contains the conclusion and recommendations.

Economía, 2008

The aim of this paper is twofold. First, we show that despite students’ disadvantaged backgrounds and despite not having more financial resources than similar schools, there are schools in Chile that serve low income students and that obtain superior academic outcomes. Second, we present qualitative evidence to identify school and classroom processes that might explain these good results. Specifically, we analyze a network of Chilean private voucher schools called Sociedad de Instrucción Primaria (SIP). In the econometric analysis we use a number of propensity score based estimation methods, to find that SIP students’ achievement is not due to observables or selection on measured variables. We also perform a number of interviews to SIP schools and other neighboring schools. Our qualitative analysis suggests that having children’s learning as a central and permanent goal, an aim that is shared and that drives the community’s efforts, seems to best summarize what makes SIP schools special.

2017

In 2008, Chile implemented a targeted voucher program that increased voucher values for disadvantaged students at participating schools by approximately 50%. Although disadvantaged students made substantial fourth grade test score gains that other studies have attributed to the program, our analysis raises serious doubts that the program had a substantial effect on cognitive skills. First, there was only a minor reduction in class size and little evidence of increases in any inputs. An audit showed that many schools were not using additional revenues for permitted expenditures, and estimates that exploit a discontinuity in the revenues allocated to schools show no evidence of positive effects of allocated funds on achievement growth. In addition, there is limited evidence of competitive or incentive effects on school quality or that disadvantaged students transitioned to higher quality schools. The much smaller gains made by disadvantaged students in low-stakes eighth grade test scores along with an increased rate of missing scores on fourth grade tests is consistent with extensive strategic behavior by schools. In contrast, increases in parental education and income among disadvantaged children indicate a primary role for improvements in family circumstances of tested students in explaining the meaningful decline in the achievement gap.

Graduate Theses and Dissertations - Public Policy, 2009

Includes bibliographical references. Improving the quality of education systems is one of the most important challenges faced by Latin American governments. In order to achieve this goal, Chile has introduced several reforms such as the National System for Assessing School Performance (SNED). The System provides monetary incentives to teachers mainly based on students' performance on national standardized tests. This study shows that reading, mathematical and scientific literacy measured by PISA-2006 assessments are positively related with attendance at schools awarded by SNED-2006, after controlling for individual socio-economical factors as well as school quality factors. Schools awarded by SNED-2006 not only offered higher education quality compared to their peers in terms of national curriculum coverage, but they also contributed to develop higher competences relevant to future personal, social and economic well being among their students.