Private and Public Schooling in the Southern Cone: A Comparative Analysis of Argentina and Chile. Occasional Paper.

Argentina and Chile have longstanding policies that give public subsidies to private schools. This paper uses data from 1997 from Argentina and Chile to compare the academic outcomes of seventh and eighth graders in public and private schools. Three types of private schools are analyzed: Catholic schools that are subsidized by the government, nonreligious schools that are subsidized, and private schools that receive no subsidies. The analyses suggest a mixed portrait of private school effectiveness. In both countries, Catholic subsidized schools are somewhat more effective than public schools in producing student outcomes, although these results are probably an upper limit to the true effects, due to selection bias. These effects may be due, in part, to the unique missions, policies, and resources characteristic of the Catholic sector, although empirical research to substantiate this is sparse. In contrast, there are few differences in outcomes between public and nonreligious subsidized schools in Chile. Enrollments in nonreligious subsidized private schools are substantially larger in Chile. The diminished effectiveness of these schools in Chile may be due, in part, to their different objectives. Again, however, research is not sufficient to explain why different types of private schools may produce different results. (Author)