The benefits of school autonomy

While it is generally believed that school quality matters, finding what it is that makes a school good or bad has proved very difficult. The most commonly studied variable, class size, has produced very inconclusive results. But clearly there is a lot more to education than class size. This paper shows some interesting results on the benefits of greater school autonomy.

School autonomy and educational performance: within-country evidence
Jean Hindriks, Maijn Verschelde, Glenn Rayp and Koen Schoors
This paper shows the value of school autonomy for educational performance. To fully capture the informational advantage of local actors, we define school autonomy as the operational empowerment of the principals and teachers. The Flemish secondary school system in Belgium is analyzed as it is has a long history of educational school autonomy, but considerable variation between schools in school staff empowerment. Combining detailed school level and pupil level data from the PISA 2006 study with a semiparametric hierarchical model, we find strong indications that operational school autonomy is associated with high educational performance if appropriate accountability systems are active. Sensitivity tests show that both low and high-performers benefit from this kind of school autonomy.

Do good colleges lead to good health?

Quality and Young Adult Health Behaviors
Jason Fletcher, David Frisvold

Large literatures have shown important links between the quantity of completed education and health outcomes on one hand and the quality of schooling on a host of adult outcomes, such as wages, on the other hand. However, little research has been targeted to producing evidence of the link between school quality and health. The paper presents the first evidence in the literature on the potential short and intermediate term effects of attending a selective college on health behaviors during and following college attendance. Using a variety of empirical methods, this paper shows strong evidence that college quality reduces tobacco and marijuana use but has small and possibly positive effects on binge drinking. The effects on weight behaviors are suggestive of reduced weight, potentially through diet but not exercise change.

School quality information & school choice

The main purpose of providing information on school characteristics is that parents & students can make informed decisions about school choice. It is, after all, one of the most important decisions that parents make for their kids. All the more curious that the law in Ireland prohibits the publication of such information. But I digress.
The paper below looks at whether information on school quality does influence decisions about school choice. The effects seem rather small with students only prepared to travel 200 metres more to attend an above average school. Perhaps, there is very little variation in school quality or perhaps the Dutch are pathologically lazy.

Ranking the Schools: How Quality Information Affects School Choice in the Netherlands

Koning, Pierre &van der Wiel, Karen

This paper analyzes whether information on high school quality published by a national newspaper affects school choice in the Netherlands. For this purpose, we use both school level and individual student level data. First, we study the causal effect of quality scores on the influx of new high school students using a longitudinal school dataset. We find that negative (positive) school quality scores decrease (increase) the number of students choosing a school after the year of publication. The positive effects are particularly large for the academic school track. An academic school track receiving the most positive score sees its inflow of students rise by 15 to 20 students. Second, we study individual school choice behaviour to address the relative importance of the quality scores, as well as potential differences in the quality response between socio-economic groups.

Although the probability of attending a school is affected by its quality score, it is mainly driven by the travelling distance.

Students are only willing to travel about 200 meters more in order to attend a well-performing rather than an average school. In contrast to equity concerns that are often raised, we cannot find differences in information responses between socio-economic groups.

School resources and school quality

How we make schools better? More money, obviously.Or maybe not, this paper shows that it may be possible to improve school quality without additional financial resources.
Do School Resources Increase School Quality ?
Nadir Altanok
The aim of this paper is to verify whether school resource factors have an impact on the quality of education. This latter is measured with the help of a unique database on student scores in international skills tests. The general difficulties inherent in this type of study are the possibility of endogeneity bias and measurement errors. After estimation bias correction, we show that improvement in the quality of educational systems does not necessarily require an increase in school resources. When an alternative indicator of the performance of educational systems is used, our results are confirmed. Consequently, one should remain cautious about recommending purely financial measures to improve quality of education.

Teacher quality

Everybody knows that schools differ massively in their quality. This is not just - or even especially- an Irish phenomenon. However finding the elusive factors that determine what make schools good has proved both scientifially challenging and politically tricky. There is now a fairly substantial body of evidence showng that reducing class size is not that important, certainly once it is below a certain level. Nonetheless it continues to get a lot of air-time here partly because teachers' unions like it (no surprise there) and because it is intuitively appealing.
The emphasis elsewhere has shifted, the US' No Child Left Behind Act introduced by George W. Bush focused attention on school accountability. This idea has certainly not caught on here in Ireland where lack of accountability is effectively enshrined in law: data on school performance may not be published.
Some researchers in the US, notably Eric Hanushek of Stanford University, have emphasized the importance of teacher quality. In an interesting development, policy makers have got behind the idea of teacher quality, under the Race to the Top program, and have linked states' access to funds available through the stimulus package. Specifically, states are being asked to reform around four areas:

• Adopting standards and assessments that prepare students to succeed in college and the workplace and to compete in the global economy;
• Building data systems that measure student growth and success, and inform teachers and principals about how they can improve instruction;
• Recruiting, developing, rewarding, and retaining effective teachers and principals, especially where they are needed most; and
• Turning around our lowest-achieving schools.

The article below from the Atlantic Monthly has a very good overview of these developments. Given the huge potential returns to society from improving educational attainments at school level (see my recent posting, link below), one wonders what does it take for policy makers, the education sector and the community generally to finally get serious about improving our schools?

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/print/201001/good-teaching

http://gearybehaviourcenter.blogspot.com/2010/02/high-cost-of-low-educational_12.html