The impact of private provision of public education : empirical evidence from Bogota's concession schools

In 1999 the city of Bogota, Colombia launched the concession school program designed to broaden the coverage and quality of basic education. It consists of a contract between a group of private schools and the public educational system such that private agents provide education for low-income students. This paper tests three main hypotheses concerning the impact of concessions on the quality of education: first, dropout rates are lower in concession schools than in similar public schools; second, other public schools nearby the concession schools have lower dropout rates in comparison with other public schools outside the area of influence; and third, test scores from concession schools are higher than scores in similar public schools. The paper presents evidence in favor of the three hypotheses using propensity score and matching estimators.Tertiary Education,Education For All,Secondary Education,Primary Education,Teaching and Learning,Economics of Education

Short-run learning dynamics under a test-based accountability system : evidence from Pakistan

Low student learning is a common finding in much of the developing world. This paper uses a relatively unique dataset of five semiannual rounds of standardized test data to characterize and explain the short-term changes in student learning. The data are collected as part of the quality assurance system for a public-private partnership program that offers public subsidies conditional on minimum learning levels to low-cost private schools in Pakistan. Apart from a large positive distributional shift in learning between the first two test rounds, the learning distributions over test rounds show little progress. Schools are ejected from the program if they fail to achieve a minimum pass rate in the test in two consecutive attempts, making the test high stakes. Sharp regression discontinuity estimates show that the threat of program exit on schools that barely failed the test for the first time induces large learning gains. The large change in learning between the first two test rounds is likely attributable to this accountability pressure given that a large share of new program entrants failed in the first test round. Schools also qualify for substantial annual teacher bonuses if they achieve a minimum score in a composite measure of student test participation and mean test score. Sharp regression discontinuity estimates do not show that the prospect of future teacher bonus rewards induces learning gains for schools that barely did not qualify for the bonus.Tertiary Education,Education For All,Secondary Education,Teaching and Learning,Primary Education

The impact of private provision of public education: Empirical evidence from Bogota's concession schools

In 1999, the city of Bogotá, Colombia launched the Concession School program designed to broaden the coverage and quality of basic education. It consists of a contract between a group of private schools and the public educational system such that private agents provide education for low-income students. This paper tests three main hypotheses concerning the impact of concessions on the quality of education: first, dropout rates are lower in concession schools than in similar public schools; second, other public schools nearby the concession schools have lower dropout rates in comparison with other public schools outside the area of influence; third, test scores from concession schools are higher than scores in similar public schools. The paper presents evidence in favor of the three hypotheses, using propensity score and matching estimators

The use and misuse of computers in education : evidence from a randomized experiment in Colombia

This paper presents the evaluation of the program Computers for Education. The program aims to integrate computers, donated by the private sector, into the teaching of language in public schools. The authors conduct a two-year randomized evaluation of the program using a sample of 97 schools and 5,201 children. Overall, the program seems to have had little effect on students'test scores and other outcomes. These results are consistent across grade levels, subjects, and gender. The main reason for these results seems to be the failure to incorporate the computers into the educational process. Although the program increased the number of computers in the treatment schools and provided training to the teachers on how to use the computers in their classrooms, surveys of both teachers and students suggest that teachers did not incorporate the computers into their curriculum.Tertiary Education,Primary Education,Secondary Education,Teaching and Learning,Education For All

Efficiency of colombian schools

The main goal of this paper is to study the efficiency of Colombian schools with an eye on understanding what drives school productivity and how much is to be gained by increasing efficiency. The paper uses Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to study efficiency and a Tobit model to study the determinants of efficiency. Introduction. The main goal of this paper is to study the efficiency of Colombian schools with an eye on understanding what drives school productivity and how much is to be gained by increasing efficiency. The paper uses Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to study efficiency and a Tobit model to study the determinants of efficiency. This is not the first paper to look at the efficiency of secondary schools in Colombia. Gaviria and Barrientos (2001) look at the determinants of test scores in the city of Bogotá. They find that public schools produce lower scores than private schools after controlling for socioeconomic characteristics. More importantly, they find that teacher´s education and infrastructure positively affect scores in private schools but not in public schools, which suggests the existence of inefficiencies in publicly provided education. Nunez et al. (2002) look at the differences between private and public secondary schools in both urban and rural areas for the year 1999. They find that public schools produce, on average, lower scores. However, at the bottom of the distribution, public schools appear to be better than private schools. Finally, Barrera (2003) finds that test scores in both public and private schools increased in the last decade, but that private school scores increased more than public school ones. Initially for the investigation, we analyzed the case of Bogotá. However, given the disparity between this city and the rest of the country and a desire to include municipal level variation, we decided to expand the study to the national level. The results, as we will show, change dramatically in the two samples. We will, therefore, present the results using the national sample and analyze the specific case of Bogotá separately. The paper has the following structure. In the second part, we describe the main methodology used in the analysis. The third part presents the results for the whole country. The next section includes a discussion of the potential role of costs of public versus private education. Finally we close the paper with some general conclusions. In the Appendix we present the analysis of Bogotá as a particular case.Educación, Enseñanza Secundaria, Calidad de la Educación, Rendimiento de la Educación, Colombia

Evaluating Public Per-Student Subsidies to Low-Cost Private Schools: Regression-Discontinuity Evidence from Pakistan

This study estimates the causal effects of a public per-student subsidy program targeted at low-cost private schools in Pakistan on student enrollment and schooling inputs. Program entry is ultimately conditional on achieving a minimum stipulated student pass rate (cutoff) in a standardized academic test. This mechanism for treatment assignment allows the application of regression-discontinuity (RD) methods to estimate program impacts at the cutoff. Data on two rounds of entry test takers (phase 3 and phase 4) are used. Modeling the entry process of phase-4 test takers as a sharp RD design, the authors find evidence of large positive impacts on the number of students, teachers, classrooms, and blackboards. Modeling the entry process of phase-3 test takers as a partially-fuzzy RD design given treatment crossovers, they do not find evidence of significant program impacts on outcomes of interest. The latter finding is likely due to weak identification arising from a small jump in the probability of treatment at the cutoff

Short-run Learning Dynamics under a Test-based Accountability System: Evidence from Pakistan

Low student learning is a common finding in much of the developing world. This paper uses a relatively unique dataset of five semiannual rounds of standardized test data to characterize and explain the short-term changes in student learning. The data are collected as part of the quality assurance system for a public-private partnership program that offers public subsidies conditional on minimum learning levels to low-cost private schools in Pakistan. Apart from a large positive distributional shift in learning between the first two test rounds, the learning distributions over test rounds show little progress. Schools are ejected from the program if they fail to achieve a minimum pass rate in the test in two consecutive attempts, making the test high stakes. Sharp regression discontinuity estimates show that the threat of program exit on schools that barely failed the test for the first time induces large learning gains. The large change in learning between the first two test rounds is likely attributable to this accountability pressure given that a large share of new program entrants failed in the first test round. Schools also qualify for substantial annual teacher bonuses if they achieve a minimum score in a composite measure of student test participation and mean test score. Sharp regression discontinuity estimates do not show that the prospect of future teacher bonus rewards induces learning gains for schools that barely did not qualify for the bonus

The Use and Misuse of Computers in Education: Evidence from a Randomized Experiment in Colombia

This paper presents the evaluation of the program Computers for Education. The program aims to integrate computers, donated by the private sector, into the teaching of language in public schools. The authors conduct a two-year randomized evaluation of the program using a sample of 97 schools and 5,201 children. Overall, the program seems to have had little effect on students' test scores and other outcomes. These results are consistent across grade levels, subjects, and gender. The main reason for these results seems to be the failure to incorporate the computers into the educational process. Although the program increased the number of computers in the treatment schools and provided training to the teachers on how to use the computers in their classrooms, surveys of both teachers and students suggest that teachers did not incorporate the computers into their curriculum

Decentralization and Education: an empirical investigation

This thesis analyses, using a quasi-experimental approach, the relationship between decentralization and education in Colombia, where in 1991 decentralization of the State was implemented. The thesis focuses on two relationships: first, the relationship between decentralization and quality of education; and second, this relationship across individuals with different incomes. Theoretically, decentralization may increase the efficiency in the provision of education, and therefore, we would expect an increment in educational quality in schools affected by decentralization. Furthermore, decentralization may create a more unequal distribution of educational quality, and therefore, we expect that the impact of decentralization is asymmetric with respect to income. The thesis makes use of a new dataset that comes from two sources. First, data from the Ministry of Education provide an important array of school characteristics. Second, data from the ICFES, the institute in charge of administering standardized tests in Colombia, provide test scores and characteristics of individuals. We present three types of quasi-experimental models based on different control and treatment groups. First, we estimate the effect of decentralization on public schools, using private ones as a comparison group. Second, we restrict the estimation to public schools, but now the treatment group is comprised of schools in initially highly dependent departments, and the control group of schools in departments with initially highly independent relationship with the central government. Finally, the third model is a nested model of the first two. It is a more flexible model allowing nationwide effects and public school effects. The empirical results are mixed. We find a positive impact of decentralization in the first two models. However, the third model presents a negative result. The results from the tests on an asymmetrical impact of decentralization, depending on income, are mixed as well. In the last two models, the results are symmetric. However, in the first model the results are asymmetric, and interestingly, in favour of low-income individuals. That is, decentralization increases the test scores for individuals at the left tail of the income distribution

IMPACT EVALUATION SERIES NO. 10 The Impact of Private Provision of Public Education: Empirical Evidence from Bogotá's Concession Schools

Abstract. In 1999, the city of Bogotá, Colombia launched the Concession School program designed to broaden the coverage and quality of basic education. It consists of a contract between a group of private schools and the public educational system such that private agents provide education for low-income students. This paper tests three main hypotheses concerning the impact of concessions on the quality of education: first, dropout rates are lower in concession schools than in similar public schools; second, other public schools nearby the concession schools have lower dropout rates in comparison with other public schools outside the area of influence; third, test scores from concession schools are higher than scores in similar public schools. The paper presents evidence in favor of the three hypotheses, using propensity score and matching estimators