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Does school autonomy make sense everywhere? Panel estimates from PISA

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Listed author(s):
  • Hanushek, Eric A.
  • Link, Susanne
  • Wößmann, Ludger

Abstract

Decentralization of decision-making is among the most intriguing recent school reforms, in part because countries went in opposite directions over the past decade and because prior evidence is inconclusive. We suggest that autonomy may be conducive to student achievement in well-developed systems but detrimental in low-performing systems. We construct a panel dataset from the four waves of international PISA tests spanning 2000-2009, comprising over one million students in 42 countries. Relying on panel estimation with country fixed effects, we estimate the effect of school autonomy from within-country changes in the average share of schools with autonomy over key elements of school operations. Our results suggest that autonomy affects student achievement negatively in developing and low-performing countries, but positively in developed and high-performing countries. These estimates are unaffected by a wide variety of robustness and specification tests, providing confidence in the need for nuanced application of reform ideas.

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Paper provided by University of Munich, Department of Economics in its series Munich Reprints in Economics with number 20465.

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Date of creation: 2013
Publication status: Published in Journal of Development Economics 104(2013): pp. 212-232
Handle: RePEc:lmu:muenar:20465
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Find related papers by JEL classification:
  • I20 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - General
  • O15 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Economic Development: Human Resources; Human Development; Income Distribution; Migration
  • H75 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations - - - State and Local Government: Health, Education, and Welfare
  • I25 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Education and Economic Development

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  1. Educational Romanticism & Economic Development
    by pseudoerasmus in Pseudoerasmus on 2015-06-15 01:16:07
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