Public subsidies to private schools do make a difference for achievement in mathematics: Longitudinal evidence from Canada

School Sector Differences in Student Achievement in Australian Primary and Secondary Schools: A Longitudinal Analysis

“…So for the fixed-effects analyses to be comparable across grades the scale scores are converted to z scores by Year level and domain. Standardization is commonly used to harmonize test scores across grades for fixed-effects analyses (Hanushek, Kain, Markman, & Rivkin, 2003;Lefebvre, Merrigan, & Verstraete, 2011). Therefore, the estimates for the school sector are interpreted as the change in standardized NAPLAN score for the independent and Catholic school sectors relative to the government sector.…”

Does school type affect cognitive and non-cognitive development in children? Evidence from Australian primary schools

“…This propensity score matching approach relies on the assumption that conditional on observable characteristics, students in private and public schools do not systematically differ in unobservable traits. The fourth approach is to take advantage of panel data and control for fixed individual characteristics, leaving the estimate of the change in school sectors in one year and changes in school outcomes in that same year (Lefebvre, Merrigan, and Verstraete, 2011). This approach however does not account for the likelihood of reverse causality since it requires that students do not switch schools for reasons that are related to educational outcomes.…”

Social Capital in Schools

“…A study carried out in 84 Flemish secondary schools showed that in schools where teacher expectations were low, students perceived their teachers as less supportive and had higher rates of problem behavior and deviance (Demanet & Van Houtte, 2012 ). As suggested by Lefebvre et al ( 2011 ), the lower prevalence of behavioral problems, higher than average student performance, and an environment that rewards achievements may attract better teachers to private schools or to schools with good reputations. Thus, although high human capital and high fi nancial capital are likely to be clustered in the same schools, the review above shows that traditionally schools have tended to be viewed as a reservoir of fi nancial and human capital, which, in turn, affect student outcomes.…”

“…At least in the USA, private schools have smaller student-teacher ratios than do public schools (National Centre for Educational Statistics, 2010 ), and they are usually wealthier than public schools. Lefebvre, Merrigan, and Verstraete ( 2011 ) showed that attending a Canadian private school rather than public school increased students' mathematic achievement even when controlling for socioeconomic covariates. They suggested several possible mechanisms through which the achievement gap between private and public schools could be explained.…”

“…These include peer effect, close monitoring of performance, strict discipline, higher academic workload, and better work environment for teachers' in private schools. However, in general the evidence on differences in student outcomes for private vs. public schools has been mixed (Lefebvre et al, 2011 ). The discussion on the mechanisms explaining differences in student outcomes brings us to human capital at schools, which in this case refers to teacher qualifi cations.…”