Education Production Function Research Articles

Greek membership and academic performance: evidence from student-level data

ABSTRACTCompared to other inputs of the ‘education production function’, less is known about the effect of social and non-classroom choices. This study examines whether joining fraternities and sororities improves academic performance. In order to account for the self-selection bias of Greek membership, I exploit plausibly exogenous cross-class variation in Greek student composition at the course-instructor level. My estimate shows that a 10 percentage point increase in Greek student composition translates to a 0.02 standard deviation increase in course grade for Greek students relative to non-Greek students. I further find that this effect is driven largely by low-achieving and middle-achieving white Greek members.

Learning Outcomes in an Introductory Sociology Course: The Role of Learning Approach, Socio-Demographic Characteristics, Group and Teacher Effects

The article discusses a study on learning outcomes in an introductory Sociology course in a higher education setting. A quantitative model similar to education production functions is hypothesized. Independent variables include socio-demographic and psychological ones, as well as others pertaining to the learning environment. Learning is measured with the binary categories of “deep” and “surface” outcomes, which are qualitatively different, and are based on the comparison of mind maps drawn by students at the beginning and end of their first semester. Questionnaire data was collected from 264 first-year students of a Social Science Faculty. Significant effects on learning outcome are found for family background, major area of study, and teacher’s gender.

Combining behavioral economics and field experiments to reimagine early childhood education

AbstractBehavioral economics and field experiments within the social sciences have advanced well beyond academic curiosum. Governments around the globe as well as the most powerful firms in modern economies employ staffs of behavioralists and experimentalists to advance and test best practices. In this study, we combine behavioral economics with field experiments to reimagine a new model of early childhood education. Our approach has three distinct features. First, by focusing public policy dollars on prevention rather than remediation, we call for much earlier educational programs than currently conceived. Second, our approach has parents at the center of the education production function rather than at its periphery. Third, we advocate attacking the macro education problem using a public health methodology, rather than focusing on piecemeal advances.

Effects of State Expenditure on the Primary Completion Rate in Burkina Faso

The purpose of the paper is to identify and analyze the effects of budget expenditures (operation, salary, and investment) on the completion rate of primary education. The annual education budgetary data from 1970 to 2013 collected in Burkina Faso were used to estimate a parametric education production function. The results show a positive effect of unitary investment expenditure and a negative effect of unit staff salaries and budgetary instabilities. Pay mechanisms in public administration should be redesigned to reward proven performance and skills. Moreover, the control of budget programming would lead to better results in the education sector.

Class Composition Effects and School Welfare: Evidence From Portugal Using Panel Data

Using student-level longitudinal data of 6th graders I estimate class composition effects impacting on individual academic achievement. The richness of the dataset allows to tackle endogeneity stemming from between and within-school non-random sorting of students and of teachers and other confounding factors through the inclusion of many control covariates that characterize the students’ cumulative process of learning and several fixed effects, namely school, teacher and cohort fixed effects. I find that increasing the percentage of high achievers, in a 6th grade class, has a negative effect on student performance. Larger shares of low-income classmates improve performance for non-low-income students. The shares of male and foreign students yield non or faintly significant results. Using the setup of a particular school, representative of the sample, I also compute improving classrooms’ allocation of students by rearranging the existing students through the existing classes using the estimates of the education production function and different social welfare functions. This way I assess how the actual distribution of students across classes of a given school-grade deviate from what can be considered an improving distribution of classmates. Pareto improving allocations were not found, nevertheless utilitarian welfare functions yield marginally improving allocations.

Experimental Estimates of the Student Attendance Production Function

Student attendance is both a critical input and intermediate output of the education production function. However, the malleable classroom-level determinants of student attendance are poorly understood. We estimate the causal effect of class size and observable teacher qualifications on student attendance rates by leveraging the random classroom assignments made by Tennessee's Project STAR (Student/Teacher Achievement Ratio) class size experiment. A ten-student increase in class size raises the probability of being chronically absent by about three percentage points (21%). For black students, random assignment to a black teacher reduces the probability of chronic absence by 3.1 percentage points (26%). These suggest that a small, but nontrivial, share (about 5%) of class-size and race-match effects on student achievement are driven by changes in students' attendance habits.

Breaking Up the Vicious Cycle of Poverty: How Can the School Performance of Children from Low-Income Households in Macedonia Be Improved?

The aim of the study is to examine the factors that affect educational achievements of children from low-income households in Macedonia. In addition, we compare the two distinctive social programs that provide assistance for children from poor households in the country. Our empirical strategy is based on the education production function, which is estimated using the ordinary least squares (OLS) and ordered probit approach. We regress an indicator for educational achievement on three groups of factors: i) individual characteristics; ii) household characteristics; and iii) school-related characteristics/variables. The findings suggest that all three sets of factors are significantly related with the school performance of young individuals. Individual- and family-related factors are more important than the school climate, although this finding may be related to the availability (and hence, the choice) of the school-related variables. Gender, father’s education, and ethnicity were found to be significantly related to the educational achievement of students. Among the family factors, we find that the number of rooms at home and household consumption are positively related to school performance. On the other hand, household size, conditional cash transfers (CCTs) acceptance and the measures of parental involvement are negatively related to achievement. We find that only one measure of school context, the average grade in school, is significant.

Implementing Recorded Lectures: Education Production Function Analysis in Economics Online Courses

Instructor created recorded lectures were introduced to two principles of macroeconomics and two principles of microeconomics online courses to improve student outcomes. Using the education production function, both time spent and access were modeled using a first difference regression and Generalized Method of Moments estimators. Data for this study, covering nine weeks for each course, were collected from the course management system, book publisher and college registrar. Results show that more time spent in the course management system and book publisher’s homework system lead to increased grades while accessing recorded lectures had mixed results.

DO PRIVATE TUTORS ENHANCE ENGLISH LANGUAGE ABILITY? REGRESSION DISCONTINUITY EVIDENCE FROM A POLICY EXPERIMENT IN INDIA

ABSTRACTEmpirical evidence has shown that returns to English language ability are substantial in India. Research has also focused on the impact of private tutoring in the context of developing economies to find evidence that remedial teaching leads to better student achievement and higher test scores. In this paper I analyze whether private tutoring helps in developing English language ability. Simple OLS estimates suggest statistically significant effects but estimated coefficients are rather small at 0.2 percentage points. Presence of confounders and selection bias may potentially understate the true effects of private tutoring on English language ability. To address this issue, I exploit a unique policy experiment in India in a regression discontinuity framework to identify cohorts eligible for private tutoring and compare their outcomes to the ineligible. I use this potentially exogenous policy variation as an instrument for private tutoring and find significant increases in English language ability estimated at 16 percentage points which is much larger than the simple OLS effects. Since standard academic curriculum is not directed towards improving foreign language ability, private tutoring as an input in the education production function seems to offer high marginal returns. From a policy perspective, this implies that private tutoring should be encouraged for enhancing English ability even though there are concerns that this provides disincentives for teachers to teach in school.

The educational performance of immigrant children: Examination of the native-immigrant education gap

Why is there a native-immigrant education gap in Denmark? And has the gap been reduced over time? This article adds to existing research by examining the explanations behind the existence of the education gap and the development in the gap across time. The education gap is examined by comparing upper secondary completion rates for children graduating from compulsory school between 1990 and 2007. The education production function is estimated as a linear probability model with OLS. The article finds that the gap has narrowed significantly over the past 20 years and that differences in family background explain a large part of the gap. Furthermore, a strong relation between the child’s age at arrival and educational performance is found.

Racial diversity and academic test scores in public elementary schools

ABSTRACTThis article examines the effect of racial diversity on academic achievement using panel data on San Francisco’s public elementary schools from 2003 to 2007. Theories argue that the relationship between racial diversity and academic achievement may be positive or negative. Few studies have examined the effect of racial diversity in US elementary schools. Fixed effects models are used to examine the relationship between racial diversity and academic performance in elementary schools. Controls for student differences and teaching staff differences are added as part of the education production function literature. Results show that racial diversity has little effect on academic achievement scores.

Using non-radial DEA to assess school efficiency in a cross-country perspective: An empirical analysis of OECD countries

In this paper we use data from OECD countries participating in PISA 2012 to assess the efficiency of schools in a cross-country framework. In the analysis, and in contrast to previous applications, we consider that schools might concentrate their efforts on improving the results in one dimension of the educational output to a greater extent than in the other. To do this, we rely on non-radial efficiency measures of performance and the estimation of an educational production function based upon Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) techniques. Specifically, DEA non-radial measures allow for identifying different levels of inefficiency for each output considered (reading and maths). In particular, we apply a non-radial measure based on Ando et al. [5] and Aparicio et al. [12]. Our results show that the majority of schools in OECD countries tend to be less efficient in reading than in mathematics.

Funding and School Accountability: The Importance of Private and Decentralised Public Funding for Pupil Attainment

AbstractWe discuss the issue of how schools should be financed, concentrating on the role of private funding and public funding via subnational governments as accountability mechanisms in the provision of educational services. The historical evolution of school regulation in Italy and Spain has created differences in the percentage of pupils who attend private schools, the percentage of private school funding coming from public and private sources and the percentage of public school funding that comes from central or local government sources. We take advantage of these institutional diversities rooted in history to estimate the disciplining role of these different sources of funding in the context of an educational production function using Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) data. Our results provide support to both accountability mechanisms and point to the presence of an important interplay between them.

Evaluate the Affected Factors on Student's Mathematics Performance in Rural Areas by Estimating an Education Production Function : As a Case Study of Passara Educational Zone, Sri Lanka

Evaluate the Affected Factors on Student's Mathematics Performance in Rural Areas by Estimating an Education Production Function : As a Case Study of Passara Educational Zone, Sri Lanka

Follow the Leader: Student Strikes, School Absenteeism and Long Term Implications for Education Outcomes

The 2011 Chilean student strikes, led by university students but promptly joined by hundreds of thousands of secondary school students, triggered a significant drop in public secondary school attendance (a decline of about 15 percentage points in all four grades). Attendance returned to normal levels in 2012. Using the type of school that students attended in 2011 as an instrument for school absenteeism, I show that school absenteeism has negative effects on secondary school students’ results in a post-secondary high-stakes math exam and university enrollment rates. Instrumental variables estimations suggest that a 10 percentage point decrease in attendance during secondary school is related to a 9.5 percent of a standard deviation decline in the math exam score, and a 3.2 percentage point reduction in the associated probability of university enrollment. I do not find any significant effect on the high-stakes language exam at the 5 percent level. A key finding is the persistent negative effect of school absenteeism on students' academic performance: this negative effect is present even for those students who sat the high-stakes exams three years after the strikes had ended, that is, after three years of regular schooling following the negative shock to their attendance. These results are not driven by inputs to the education production function that might have been affected by the student strikes, such as disruptiveness at the time of the high-stakes exams, school environment, teachers, class instruction, or class size.

Determinants of Learning among Primary School Children in Ethiopia: Analysis of Round 2 and 3 of Young Lives Data

AbstractAlthough years of schooling and enrolment rates can be used as measures of educational progress, they are inadequate in explaining children's learning process. This is because the benefits of education are ultimately determined by the skills acquired in school, and not just the number of years spent in education. This paper investigates the determinants of learning among primary school children in Ethiopia using Round 2 and 3 of the unique Young Lives survey data. Using the framework of the education production function, the inherent endogeneity problem is discussed and addressed as much as data permits. Empirical evidence suggests that children in private schools do not learn better than their counterparts in public schools. In addition, household income has little effect on children's learning. This suggests that government‐backed income transfer programmes to low‐income households may not achieve substantial improvement in learning outcomes. Rather, the number of hours spent studying at school may be more relevant in improving children's learning outcomes. Thus, full‐day teaching as against the erstwhile shift teaching system in Ethiopia should be fully implemented and sustained across regions and districts.

Evaluate the Affected Factors on Student's Mathematics Performance in Rural Areas by Estimating an Education Production Function : As a Case Study of Passara Educational Zone, Sri Lanka

Evaluate the Affected Factors on Student's Mathematics Performance in Rural Areas by Estimating an Education Production Function : As a Case Study of Passara Educational Zone, Sri Lanka

Would weighted-student funding enhance intra-district equity in Texas? A simulation using DEA

We use data envelopment analysis to model the educational production function, and then explore how a shift to weighted student funding using the student weights embedded in the Texas School Finance Formula would alter the allocation of inputs and potential outputs. School outputs are measured as value-added reading and math scores on standard achievement tests. We find that if school districts allocated their resources efficiently, then they would not allocate their resources to campuses according to the funding model weights. Policies that promote greater efficiency would also enhance equity in educational outcomes.

Stakeholders’ Perception on Instructional Effectiveness in Maseno University, Kenya

Higher education in Kenya has experienced tremendous growth since independence. With only one public university with an enrolment of less than 1000, the number stands at twenty two public universities with student population of over 150,000. This growth has been attributed to the introduction of module II programs and increased private and public funding for university education. However, despite the increase in enrolments, there has been no commensurate development and/or improvement of the requisite teaching staff and other teaching and learning resources. Consequently, stakeholders have raised concerns on the instructional effectiveness and the quality of education provided in public universities in Kenya. This study was conceived to establish the effect of university expansion on instructional effectiveness in Maseno University. The study was anchored on the education production function theory and adopted a descriptive design. The study was carried out in Maseno University. The target population was 7,377 comprising of 7,000 undergraduate students and 377 lecturers of Maseno University in the 2011/12 academic year. Simple random sampling was used to select 2,100 students and 114 lecturers making a sample of 2,214. Data was collected using a questionnaire for students and lecturers and document analysis. Research instruments were validated using face and content validity while reliability was determined using the test-retest technique at r= 0.7. A pilot study was conducted in Maseno University and the data collected used to determine the reliability of research instruments. Data was analyzed descriptively using frequencies and percentages by aid of SPSS version 17 and analyzed objectively and presented in tables. Based on these findings, it was concluded that both the teaching staff and students highly did not have enough confidence in the effectiveness of the instructional processes at Maseno University.

The Effectiveness Analysis of Public Education and Health Expenditures

Abstract. This study examines the links between public education and health expenditures, and education and health outcomes- measured by the school life expactancy and rate of child (under five) mortality, life expactancy at birth. It also investigates the role of governance on the effectiveness of public education and health expenditures. The effectiveness of public education and health expenditures is examined within education and health production function by using 2002- 2012 data. Empirical results show that effects of socioeconomic and environmental factors and demographic structure on education and health outcomes are similar to those in previous studies. The results indicate two important findings. First, public education and health expenditures remain incapable to explain outcomes when compared to other socioeconomic variables. Second, increase in public education and health expenditures is associated with improved outcomes just in countries where regulatory quality and control of corruption is high. With a general expression, public education and health expenditures become more effective in countries with high governance level. Keywords. Public education expenditures, Public health expenditures, Child mortality rate, Life expactancy at birth, School life expactancy. JEL. I18, I28, H51, H52.