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Exploiting a unique policy reform in Egypt that reduced the number of years of compulsory schooling, we show how it unexpectedly increased education attainment as more students chose to complete the next school stage. This impact is almost entirely driven by girls from more disadvantaged households. Treated women later experienced important positive improvements in labor market opportunity and marriage quality, as measured by bride price received and household bargaining power. We attribute the increased investment in daughters’ human capital to changes in the behavior of credit-constrained families facing reduced school costs combined with strongly non-linear returns to female education.

Este trabalho utiliza, pela primeira vez, os microdados do Exame Nacional do Ensino Médio (Enem) para analisar o papel da escola no desempenho dos alunos no ensino médio das mil melhores escolas particulares e públicas do estado de São Paulo. O objetivo é verificar se o controle pelas características socioeconômicas altera o ranking oficial das escolas e se a mensalidade está relacionada com o desempenho médio da escola. Os resultados mostram que o controle pelo background familiar não altera expressivamente o ranking das escolas, apesar de diminuir significativamente os efeitos escola. Além disso, cerca de 24% dos efeitos escola podem ser explicados pelo efeito dos pares. Por fim, a sensibilidade estimada do desempenho escolar em relação à mensalidade é de 0,11, ou seja, um aumento de 10% no valor da mensalidade escolar aumenta a nota do aluno em 1,1%, mesmo após controlarmos pelo background familiar e pelo efeito dos pares. Tuition, family background and proficiency results :: This paper utilizes for the first time in the literature the microdata from Enem to examine the school effect on the proficiency of high school students of the 1,000 best schools in the São Paulo State. The aim of the paper is to examine if the control by socioeconomic characteristics significantly alters the official school rankings. The results show that it does not, although it significantly decreases the magnitude of the school effect. Further, we show that about 24% of the school effect can be explained by the peer effect. Finally, the elasticity of the proficiency with respect to the school cost is 0,11, that is, a 10% rise in the school cost increases the students’ performance by about 1,1%, even after controlling for the family background and peer effect.

This paper develops and estimates an equilibrium model of charter school entry and school choice. In the model, households choose among public, private, and charter schools, and a regulator authorizes charter entry and mandates charter exit. The model is estimated for Washington, D.C. According to the estimates, charters generate net social gains by providing additional school options, and they benefit non-white, low-income, and middle-school students the most. Further, policies that raise the supply of prospective charter entrants in combination with high authorization standards enhance social welfare.

Advocates argue that voucher programs can correct the incentive problems of education systems in developing economies. An accountability perspective, based on a principal-agent framework, was developed to clarify the arguments for and against education vouchers. An assessment of findings on voucher programs in industrial countries and a review of voucher or quasi-voucher experiences in Bangladesh, Chile, Colombia, Côte d'Ivoire, and the Czech Republic support the usefulness of the analytic framework. The assessment concludes that the policy relevance of voucher programs for developing economies remains uncertain. Major voucher initiatives have been attempted only in countries with a well-developed institutional infrastructure. Some studies find favorable benefits for at least some population groups, but others find limited effects and evidence of increasing social stratification in schools. Whether vouchers lead to better outcomes or greater stratification appears related to specific contexts, institutional variables, and program designs.

Conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs are becoming a popular tool for alleviating short-term poverty and reducing the inter-generational transmission of poverty. More than 30 developing and transition countries have implemented these programs, providing incentives to poor households to make investments in the human capital of their children. Programs vary in scale, transfer size, conditionality's, eligibility, and implementation features. This report is structured around five chapters as follows: the first chapter gives an overview of the program, the context in which it was implemented and available evidence on the impacts of the Female School Stipend Program (FSSP) as well as other CCTs. Chapter two focuses on the questions this evaluation sets out to answer and the methods and information used to answer them. The third chapter presents the results from the analysis and is structured around three evaluation questions regarding average impact, heterogeneity of impacts, and spillover effects. Chapter four performs the robustness checks of the findings, examining whether they are sensitive to preprogram trends, measurement error, endogenous compositional changes, and crowding-out effects. Finally, the conclusion discusses the implications of the results, some limitations of this evaluation, and areas that require further work.

In 2009, Zambia joined the Russia Education Aid for Development (READ) trust fund program, the goal of which is to help countries improve their capacity to design, carry out, analyze, and use assessments for improved student learning. As part of the READ trust fund program, and in order to gain a better understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of its existing assessment system, Zambia participated in a formal exercise to benchmark this system under The World Bank's Systems Approach for Better Education Results (SABER) program. SABER is an evidence-based program to help countries systematically examine and strengthen the performance of different aspects of their education systems. SABER-student assessment is a component of the SABER program that focuses specifically on benchmarking student assessment policies and systems. The goal of SABER-student assessment is to promote stronger assessment systems that contribute to improved education quality and learning for all. The importance of assessment is linked to its role in: providing information on levels of student learning and achievement in the system; monitoring trends in education quality over time; supporting educators and students with real-time information to improve teaching and learning; and holding stakeholders accountable for results. The SABER-student assessment framework is built on the available evidence base for what an effective assessment system looks like. The framework provides guidance on how countries can build more effective student assessment systems. The framework is structured around two main dimensions of assessment systems: the types/purposes of assessment activities and the quality of those activities. Assessment systems tend to be comprised of three main types of assessment activities, each of which serves a different purpose and addresses different information needs. These three main types are: classroom assessment, examinations, and large scale, system level assessments. This report focuses specifically on policies in the area of student assessment.

Report of a Department of Education commissioned survey of unit costs of first and second level schools in 1990.