This paper provides evidence on the sources of differences in inequality in educational scores and their evolution over time in four European countries. Using Programme for International Student Assessment data from the 2000 and the 2006 waves, the paper shows that inequality decreased in Germany and Spain (two "decentralised" schooling…

Using richly detailed data on fourth- and fifth-grade students in the North Carolina public school system, I find evidence that students are assigned to classrooms in a non-random manner based on observable characteristics for a substantial portion of classrooms. Moreover, I find that this non-random assignment is statistically related to class…

Several African countries instituted education reforms in the 1980s and 1990s. Yet, there is only little evidence on the effectiveness of these programs. Additionally, most previous studies of the determinants of literacy and numeracy have considered the proficiency in only one language and, possibly, numeracy. This paper examines both of these…

Teachers' initial placement has important implications for student achievement and the distribution of teachers among schools. This paper combines data from a US Baccalaureate and Beyond longitudinal study with school and school district information from the Common Core of Data to study the effects of initial school placement on teacher…

Fixed cutoff dates regulating school entry create disadvantages for children who are young relative to their classmates. Early and late school enrollment, though, might mitigate these disadvantages. In this paper, we analyze in a first step which factors determine school entry, if entrance screenings allow for early and late enrollment. Second, we…

In this paper we investigate the relationship between social capital and cheating behaviour in standardized tests. Given the low-stakes nature of these tests, we interpret the widespread presence of cheating as a signal of low trust towards central education authorities and as lack of respect for the rule of law. We find that cheating is…

In this paper, we use non-experimental data from government schools in Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, two of the largest Indian states, to present average school outcomes by contract status of teachers. We find that contract teachers are associated with higher effort than civil service teachers with permanent tenures, before as well as after…

Using Progress in International Reading Literacy Study 2001 and Programme for International Student Assessment 2003 data for Germany, this paper examines whether second-generation immigrants and girls are graded worse in math than comparable natives and boys, respectively. Once all grading-relevant characteristics, namely math skills and oral…

This paper uses data from the Norwegian elementary school to test whether students from disadvantaged backgrounds benefit from smaller classes. The data cover one cohort of fourth graders who have been treated in small versus large classes for a period of three years. The Norwegian class size rule of maximum 28 students is used to generate…

One of the eight Millennium Development Goals is that all children in developing countries should complete primary education. Much progress has been made toward this goal, but completing primary school does not ensure that students attain basic literacy and numeracy skills. Indeed, there is ample evidence that many children in developing countries…

We apply a quantile version of the Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition to estimate the counterfactual distribution of the test scores of Black students. In the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 1998-1999 (ECLS-K), we find that the gap initially appears only at the top of the distribution of test scores. As children age, however,…

The two-stage least squares approach together with quantile regression analysis is adopted here to estimate the educational production function. Such a methodology is able to capture the extreme behaviors of the two tails of students' performance and the estimation outcomes have important policy implications. Our empirical study is applied to the…

This paper investigates achievement gaps between low and high socioeconomic students in 19 high-income countries. On average, math scores of students with indicators of high socioeconomic status (SES) are over one standard deviation above those with low SES indicators. The paper estimates the extent to which these achievement gaps can be…

This paper uses linked household, school, and test score data from Madagascar to investigate the relation of household characteristics and school factors to the cognitive skills of children ages 8-10 and 14-16. In contrast to most achievement test studies in developing countries, the study uses representative rather than school-based samples of…

In the international context, the quality of public primary education in Indonesia is sub-standard. The assumption of officials at all levels of government is that a significant increase in funding will be required to improve education performance. The analysis in this paper shows that money does indeed matter for the attainment of primary…