Efficiency of public and publicly-subsidised high schools in Spain. Evidence from PISA 2006

The purpose of this paper is to compare the efficiency of the Spanish public and publicly-subsidised private high schools using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) fed by the results provided by a hierarchical linear model (HLM) applied to PISA-2006 (Programme for International Students Assessment) microdata. This study places special emphasis on the estimation of the determinants of school outcomes, the educational production function being estimated through an HLM that takes into account the nested nature of PISA data. Inefficiencies are then measured through the DEA and decomposed into managerial (related to individual performance) and programme (related to structural differences between management models), following Silva Portela and Thanassoulis (2001) approach. Once differences in pupils’ background and individual management inefficiencies have been eliminated, results reveal that Spanish public high schools are more efficient than publicly-subsidised private ones

Multilevel IRT Modeling in Practice with the Package mlirt

Variance component models are generally accepted for the analysis of hierarchical structured data. A shortcoming is that outcome variables are still treated as measured without an error. Unreliable variables produce biases in the estimates of the other model parameters. The variability of the relationships across groups and the group-effects on individuals' outcomes differ substantially when taking the measurement error in the dependent variable of the model into account. The multilevel model can be extended to handle measurement error using an item response theory (IRT) model, leading to a multilevel IRT model. This extended multilevel model is in particular suitable for the analysis of educational response data where students are nested in schools and schools are nested within cities/countries.\u

School sector variation on non-cognitive dimensions: are denominational schools different?

Denominational schooling makes up an important part of European educational systems. Given its specificity, denominational schooling can be expected to place a greater weight on values teaching and moral education. As such, it may be more effective in bringing about certain attitudes and opinions. It also may be more successful in creating a warm and caring atmosphere, thus helping students to better emotionally connect to the school community. This paper set out to empirically test some of these hypotheses by making use of three waves of data collected in the framework of the Program for International Student Assessment study. We compare public and publicly supported private (as a proxy to denominational) schools on two dimensions, namely the emotional integration with the rest of the school community, and the concern and feelings of responsibility towards the environment. But for Austria, Belgium and Spain, no evidence could be found that the type of the school has any impact on the reported psychological adaptation to the school. In these three countries, publicly supported private schools tend to be more successful in integrating their students. Also students in public and private dependent schools were equally environment oriented, taking into account several student and school characteristics. The lack of schooling sector differences in attaining non-cognitive aims may have at least three causes. First, ecological issues could be salient enough not to necessitate any special religious or moral reinforcement in order to gain traction. Second, public schools may use religious education or ethics just as fruitfully and consequently, they are just as successful in values and norms transmission. Third, it is possible that schools play a minor role in introducing students to environmental dilemmas and concerns, this role being taken over by the family or the media.public schools; private schools; non-cognitive; value teaching; psychological integration; PISA data

Characteristics of teaching institutions and students’ performance : new empirical evidence from OECD data

A whole branch of the economic literature suggests that institutional differences between and inside educational systems may have a larger influence on students performance than the amount of resources devoted to schooling. In this paper, we use the PISA 2000 international OECD data to evaluate the impacts of organizational and institutional factors on students performance. We estimate an education production function with country fixed-effect and school random-effect. We find that, alongside individual characteristics, school autonomy in decisions regarding the recruitment of new personnel as well as pedagogical training strongly affect students performance. On the contrary, measures of school resources and standardised evaluation of students have no consistent effect.human capital formation; individual performance; school resources; school autonomy; institutional arrangements

Deregulation of education: What does it mean for efficiency and equality?

This article analyses from a cross-national comparative perspective how deregulation of compulsory education affects two central educational outcomes: efficiency and equality. The conflict between public regulation on the one hand and the market model on the other hand describes one of the most fundamental political struggles. In several fields of societal life, such as compulsory education, the state traditionally holds a strong monopoly in almost all capitalist societies. However, using three waves of PISA school level data we show that the degree of public regulation varies cross-nationally. The central finding of our analyses is that deregulation of education increases educational achievement of individual students across all social classes and thereby fosters the educational efficiency of the national education systems. Nevertheless, it also becomes evident that higher social classes benefit more strongly from deregulation, which increases the degree of educational inequality. These results indeed confirm that deregulation of education provokes an efficiency-versus-equality trade-off in national education systems. -- Der Konflikt zwischen einer staatlichen Regulation schulischer Bildung auf der einen Seite und einem deregulierten Marktmodell auf der anderen Seite stellt eine der fundamentalsten politischen Auseinandersetzungen der letzten Jahrzehnte dar. Traditionellerweise hält der Staat das Monopol der Bildungsorganisation, doch seit einigen Jahren haben verschiedene Länder verstärkt auf eine Privatisierung und Flexibilisierung schulischer Bildung gesetzt. Allerdings variiert der Grad der Standardisierung bzw. Deregulierung über verschiedene nationale Bildungssysteme deutlich. Der Beitrag untersucht mithilfe eines internationalen Vergleichs wie sich eine Deregulierung des schulischen Sektors auf die zentralen bildungspolitischen Outcomes Effizienz (bzw. Leistung) und Chancengleichheit auswirkt. Mit Daten aus drei Wellen der OECD PISA-Studie zeigen wir, dass sich eine Deregulierung des schulischen Sektors positiv auf die Leistungen aller Schüler auswirkt und somit die Effizienz von Bildungssystemen steigert. Allerdings wird auch deutlich, dass höhere soziale Schichten stärker von einer Deregulierung profitieren. Damit bestätigt sich die Annahme, dass die Deregulierung schulischer Bildung zu einem Trade-off zwischen Effizienz und Gleichheit führt.

The impact of teacher wages on the performance of students: evidence from PISA

Teacher profile and characteristics are not weightless because student achievements are heavily teacher dependent. In this detailed and in-depth research, the impact of teacher wages on students’ achievement was assessed in different ways by using different measuring sticks; starting salary, salary after 15 year of experience, salary per hour of net teaching time and salary ratio to GDP per capita and by using country scores, of 15 year old pupil enrolled in lower secondary school, in OECD member countries. For this propose PISA 2000, 2003 and 2006 survey data of students’ scores were used. The independent variables “wages” was regressed on the dependent variable “students total mean country score”. The results of these analyses gave an indication that there is a positive impact of teacher wages on students’ performance.characteristics, profile, qualities, impact, teacher, learning, achievements, performance, student, salary, wages, gender, PISA, OECD

Factors Associated with School Effectiveness: Detection of High- and Low-Efficiency Schools through Hierarchical Linear Models

School effectiveness is a topic of interest addressed by numerous research projects focused on clarifying which variables contribute to the explanation of educational performance. This research aims to find out to what extent social, cultural, and academic variables at the student and school levels, as perceived by families, influence performance, and to evaluate the relevance of high residual and gross score criteria in the selection of effective or ineffective schools. Census data from diagnostic evaluations of the Mathematical Reasoning and Linguistic Communication of students in a certain Spanish region, over five academic years, have been used. The multilevel hierarchical analyses carried out have enabled the detection of centers of high and low efficiency, as well as the identification of which factors, related to the idiosyncrasy of the students and the educational center they attend, significantly influence the performance of the students. It was concluded that the socioeconomic and cultural level of the families, the family expectations, the commitment to reading and the educational agreement were significant variables in the explanation of the students’ educational performance, and that the residual score of the educational centers was a valid criterion to estimate their level of effectiveness once the socio-cultural factors have been controlled.Ministry of Economy and Knowledge of the Regional Goverment of Andalusia (Spain): US-1263333European Regional Development Fund (FEDER): US-1263333University of Seville: USE-20404-

The effects of educational systems, school-composition, track-level, parental background and immigrants’ origins on the achievement of 15-years old native and immigrant students. A reanalysis of PISA 2006

The effects of educational systems, school-composition, track-level, parentalbackground and immigrants’ origins on the achievement of 15-years old native andimmigrant students. A reanalysis of PISA 2006.The main research question of this paper is the combined estimation of the effectsof educational systems, school-composition and track-level on the educationalachievement of 15-years-old students. We specifically focus on the effects of socioeconomicand ethnic background on achievement scores and to what extent theseeffects are affected by characteristics of the school, track or educational system thesestudents are in. In doing so, we examine the ‘sorting’ mechanisms of schools and tracksin highly stratified, moderately stratified and comprehensive education systems. Weuse data from the 2006 PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) wave.Compared to previous research in this area the main contribution of this paper is thatwe explicitly include track-level and school-level as separate units of analyses, whichleads to less biased results of the effects of characteristics of the educational system.The results highlight the importance of including track-level and school-level factorsin the debate of educational inequality of opportunity for students in differenteducation contexts. The findings clearly indicate that the effects of educationalsystem characteristics are flawed if the analysis uses only a country and a studentlevel and ignores the track- and school-level characteristics. Moreover the inclusionof the track-level is necessary to avoid overestimation of the school-compositioneffect, especially in stratified educational systems. From a policy perspective, the mostimportant finding is that educational system are not uniformly ‘good’ or ‘bad’, butthey have different consequences for different groups. Some groups are better offin comprehensive systems, while other groups are better off in moderately or highlystratified systems.labour market entry and occupational careers;

Educational effectiveness in Chilean secondary education:Comparing different ‘value added’ approaches to evaluate schools

This article reports an original investigation into school performance measures and the multilevel nature of pupil achievement data in the Chilean school system using a sample of 177,461 students, nested within 7146 classrooms, 2283 secondary schools and 313 municipalities. The data-set comprised Year 10 students’ 2006 SIMCE test’s results in two subject outcomes (language and maths) matched to their prior attainment in grade 8 and family characteristics. The analyses showed the lack of precision of two-level models to draw conclusions regarding the effectiveness of Chilean secondary schools as well as the extent to which different pupil intake, background and context features of Chilean secondary schools influence students’ performance. The results show substantial and statistically significant municipal, school and classroom effects in Chile, and how the estimation of school effects changes according to the explanatory variables controlled for in the analysis and the outcome analysed. These results are compared with similar studies carried out in Latin America, as well as in other countries (England and China), in order to situate the findings in the broader knowledge base of Educational Assessment and Effectiveness Research

A holistic model to infer mathematics performance: the interrelated impact of student, family and school context variables

The present study aims at exploring predictors influencing mathematics performance. In particular, the study focuses on internal students' characteristics (gender, age, metacognitive experience, mathematics self-efficacy) and external contextual factors (GDP of school location, parents' educational level, teachers' educational level, and teacher beliefs). A sample of 1749 students and 91 teachers from Chinese primary schools were involved in the study. Path analysis was used to test the direct and indirect relations between the predictors and mathematics performance. Results reveal that a large proportion of mathematics performance can be directly predicted from students' metacognitive experiences. In addition, other student characteristics and contextual variables influence mathematics performance in direct or indirect ways