Publication: School Choice, Stratification, and Information on School Performance: Lessons from Chile
No Thumbnail Available
Date
2008-04
ISSN
15297470
Published
2008-04
Editor(s)
Abstract
A possible trade-off between greater efficiency and equal opportunity is central to the debate on school vouchers, for instance. Whereas economists since Milton Friedman have argued that school choice would align provider incentives with the interests of consumers and thus lead to increases in educational quality, a more recent literature points to the possibility that school choice might exacerbate stratification by socioeconomic status across schools. In "School Choice, Stratification, and Information on School Performance: Lessons from Chile," Patrick J. McEwan, Miguel Urquiola, and Emiliana Vegas contribute to this literature in two ways. First, using highly disaggregated, district-level data for Chile and a regression-discontinuity design, they find evidence that the entry of private schools into the education market is not associated with significant increases in test scores but is associated with increases in social stratification. This conclusion is consistent with previous results from the literature, suggesting that greater school choice leads to increased sorting, with no commensurate improvements in average achievement. Second, McEwan, Urquiola, and Vegas consider the implications of sampling variance (and even of "population variance" over time) for policy schemes that reward or punish schools on the basis of changes in average test scores. Policymakers have focused on these so-called value added (that is, first-differenced) measures of test scores, since test score levels are highly correlated with family socioeconomic status, as a result of the stratification previously discussed. Changes in scores also reflect sampling variation, however, including variation among the specific groups of students starting school in any given year, as well as genuine changes in the quality of the services provided by the schools. Although this issue is unlikely to be a serious problem for large municipalities, it can generate substantial rerankings for individual schools and even for smaller districts, as the authors confirm through a number of statistical tests. These findings suggest that the Chilean debates on school choice, on the ideal design for voucher schemes, and on the precise manner in which data on student achievement can be used to reward or punish schools have contributed to advances in the educational agenda in Latin America but have not yet reached a final conclusion.
Link to Data Set
Associated content
Other publications in this report series
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue
Citations
Collections
Related items
Showing items related by metadata.
Publication School Choice, Student Performance, and Teacher and School Characteristics : The Chilean Case(World Bank, Washington, D.C., 2002-04)The author explores how schools change in response to increased competition generated by voucher programs in Chile. A unique data set provides information on teacher demographics and labor market characteristics, as well as teachers' perceptions of school management. When teacher data are matched with school-level data on student achievement using a national assessment data set (SIMCE), some teacher and school characteristics affect student performance, but a great deal of unexplained variance among sectors remains important in predicting student outcomes. Teacher education, decentralization of decisionmaking authority, whether the school schedule is strictly enforced, and the extent to which teachers have autonomy in designing teaching plans and implementing projects all appear to affect student outcomes. Interestingly, teacher autonomy has positive effects on student outcomes only when decisionmaking authority is decentralized.Publication Distribution of Student Achievement in Chile : Baseline Analysis for the Evaluation of the Subvención Escolar Preferencial(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2010-02-10)This paper has two primary objectives. The first objective is to describe our method for predicting the counterfactual outcomes, and explain the reasons for this choice. The second is to present estimates of the counterfactual outcomes. The paper contains the following sections. Section two provides a description of the voucher system before the introduction of SEP (Subvencion Escolar Preferencial program, or Preferential School Subsidy), an explanation of the main components of SEP, and a summary of other educational reforms currently undergoing Parliamentary review, for which SEP may serve as a valuable pilot. In section three, we present the methodological approach employed in this paper to predict the counterfactual outcomes to which actual outcomes under SEP will be compared. Section four describes the data on students and schools used in this paper. This section also provides information on the distributions of grade four priority students and non-priority students among the nation's three types of elementary schools in the years 2005-2007 and predictions of what these distributions will have been in 2008 in the absence of SEP. Section five describes the distributions of achievement of priority students and non-priority students on SIMCE tests of Spanish, mathematics, and natural and social sciences administered at the end of the 2005, 2006, and 2007 school years, and predictions of what the average achievement scores for each group will have been in 2008 had SEP not been introduced. Section six describes trends in achievement gaps between priority and non-priority students and trends in the decomposition of these gaps into within- and between-school differences. Section seven summarizes the key findings from the baseline data analysis. It also describes research agenda for evaluating the initial impacts of SEP on the distribution of schools attended by Priority students and on the achievement of priority students on the SIMCE tests.Publication Decentralization and Educational Performance : Evidence from the PROHECO Community School Program in Rural Honduras(2011)We analyze the effectiveness of the Programa Hondureno de Educacion Comunitaria (PROHECO) community school program in rural Honduras. The data include standardized tests and extensive information on school, teacher, classroom, and community features for 120 rural schools drawn from 15 states. Using academic achievement decompositions we find that PROHECO schools do a better job of maximizing teacher effort and involving parents in the school, both of which translate into higher levels of achievement. But these efficiency advantages are offset (to some degree) by lower levels of teacher experience, training, parental education, as well as a reliance on smaller class sizes. The results help extend the community school and school based management (SBM) literatures by identifying plausible mechanisms in the chain linking increased community involvement with better student outcomes, while also highlighting the importance of local capacity.Publication No More Cutting Class? Reducing Teacher Absence and Providing Incentives for Performance(2009-02-01)Expanding and improving basic education in developing countries requires, at a minimum, teachers who are present in the classroom and motivated to teach, but this essential input is often missing. This paper describes the findings of a series of recent World Bank and other studies on teacher absence and incentives for performance. Surprise school visits reveal that teachers are absent at high rates in countries such as India, Indonesia, Uganda, Ecuador, and Zambia, reducing the quality of schooling for children, especially in rural, remote, and poor areas. More broadly, poor teacher management and low levels of teacher accountability afflict many developing-country education systems. The paper presents evidence on these shortcomings, but also on the types of incentives, management, and support structures that can improve motivation and performance and reduce avoidable absenteeism. It concludes with policy options for developing countries to explore as they work to meet Education for All goals and improve quality.Publication Poverty and Social Impact Analysis of Reform : Lessons and Examples from Implementation(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2006)Poverty and Social Impact Analysis (PSIA) is an approach used increasingly by governments, civil society organizations, the World Bank, and other development partners to examine the distributional impacts of policy reforms on the well-being of different stakeholders groups, particularly the poor and vulnerable. PSIA has an important role in the elaboration and implementation of poverty reduction strategies in developing countries because it promotes evidence-based policy choices and fosters debate on policy reform options. This publication presents a collection of case studies that illustrate the spectrum of sectors and policy reforms to which PSIA can be applied; it also elaborates on the broad range of analytical tools and techniques that can be used for PSIA. The case studies provide examples of the impact that PSIA can have on the design of policy reforms and draw operational lessons for PSIA implementation. The case studies deal largely with policy reforms in a single sector, such as agriculture (crop marketing boards in Malawi and Tanzania and cotton privatization in Tajikistan); energy (mining sector in Romania and oil subsidies in Ghana); utilities (power sector reform in Ghana, Rwanda, and transition economies, and water sector reform in Albania); social sectors (education reform in Mozambique and social welfare reform in Sri Lanka); taxation reform (Nicaragua); as well as macroeconomic modeling (Burkina Faso).
Users also downloaded
Showing related downloaded files
No results found.