Efficiency and Equity in Schools around the World

Abstract

Attention to the quality of human capital in different countries naturally leads to concerns about how school policies relate to student performance. The data from the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) provide a way of comparing performance in different schooling systems.The results of analyses of educational production functions within a range of developed and developing countries show general problems with the efficiency of resource usage similar to those found previously in the United States. These effects do not appear to be dictated by variations related to income level of the country or level of resources in the schools. Neither do they appear to be determined by school policies that involve compensatory application of resources. The conventional view that school resources are relatively more important in poor countries also fails to be supported.The emphasis on human capital policy that has become a centerpiece of government programs around the world is now accepted as a natural and enlightened view of policy.Important contributions by Theodore Shultz, Gary Becker, and Jacob Mincer set the case for the importance of human capital for individual productivity and earnings, for the distribution of economic success, and ultimately for the growth of national economies. The implications of this work has been extended into the developing world by a strong and consistent focus of the World Bank -propelled in large part by a series of influential studies by George Psacharopoulos. This work builds on that, considering what countries can do to improve the human capital of their populations. The central focus is how systematic policy actions of governments affect student performance. Building upon the testing and surveys of the Third International Mathematics andScience Study (TIMSS), we consider specifically how families and schools contribute to within and between country variations in student performance. We then go beyond this to investigate whether school in the different countries work to narrow or widen performance differences. School quantity and qualityEmpirical work in human capital has concentrated on the private returns to the quantity school obtained by individuals. The standard Mincer formulation shows how investment can be translated into observed differences across individuals (Mincer (1970(Mincer ( , 1974). If investment declines linearly and if all of the costs of investment are forgone earnings, the simple relationship between log earnings and years of schooling yields a direct estimate of the rate of return on a year of schooling. This elegant characterization has the overwhelming virtue that it can be applied using commonly available data not only for the United States but many countries of the world. In

Cross-country efficiency of secondary education provision: A semi-parametric analysis with non-discretionary inputs

“…Barro and Lee (2001) find that student performance is positively correlated to the level of school resources, such as pupil-teacher ratios, and also to family background (income and education of parents). Hanushek and Kimko (2000) and Hanushek and Luque (2003) find little or no evidence of a positive link from more resources allocated to the education system and test performance. However, they find that adult schooling levels have a positive and significant effect on student performance.…”

“…Examples are Barro (2001), Hanushek and Kimko (2000), Hanushek and Luque (2003) and Kirjavainen and Loikkanen (1998).…”

Schooling quality in Eastern Europe: Educational production during transition

“…Although also using the TIMSS database, Hanushek and Luque (2003) do not employ it at the student level but aggregate it to the classroom level instead.…”

Evidence that class size matters in 4th grade mathematics: An analysis of TIMSS 2007 data for Colombia

“…Rivkin, Hanushek, and Kain [2005] found adverse effects on achievement from larger classes in 4 th and 5 th grade in a longitudinal study in Texas, and the adverse effects were much larger in mathematics than in reading. Using TIMSS 1995 test score data, Hanushek and Luque [2003] found evidence that larger mathematics classes had a negative effect on achievement in 14 of 17 (mostly developed) countries at age 9 but not at age 13.…”

“…The average class size in Colombia is considerably larger than the average class size in 16 of the 17 countries that Hanushek and Luque [2003] examined in their study using TIMSS 1995 data.…”