Inside the House of Learning : The Relative Performance of Public and Private Schools in Orissa

Empirical evidence shows that the quality of learning in public schools is very low in India. There is also a robust belief that private schools offer better-quality learning at a lower cost and are a cost-effective alternative to public schools. Most of the evidence on which this latter claim is ba...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author:	Goyal, Sangeeta
Format:	Journal Article
Language:	EN
Published:	2012
Subjects:	Analysis of Education I210 Economic Development: Human Resources Human Development Income Distribution Migration O150
Online Access:	http://hdl.handle.net/10986/5797

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recordtype	oai_dc
spelling	okr-10986-57972021-04-23T14:02:23Z Inside the House of Learning : The Relative Performance of Public and Private Schools in Orissa Goyal, Sangeeta Analysis of Education I210 Economic Development: Human Resources Human Development Income Distribution Migration O150 Empirical evidence shows that the quality of learning in public schools is very low in India. There is also a robust belief that private schools offer better-quality learning at a lower cost and are a cost-effective alternative to public schools. Most of the evidence on which this latter claim is based does not correct for selection bias--students who go to private schools may differ systematically from students who go to public schools on observable and unobservable characteristics. In this context, it is entirely plausible that public schools may be no worse or even better than private schools although the latter may still be more cost-effective. In this paper, we use a strategy suggested by Altonji, Elder, and Taber to estimate selection bias in the positive private school effect on test scores. We use test scores data on Grade Four students attending public and private schools in the eastern state of Orissa in India. Our findings suggest that there is a true private school effect as only 12-13% of the adjusted test score difference is due to selection on unobserved factors. 2012-03-30T07:34:35Z 2012-03-30T07:34:35Z 2009 Journal Article Education Economics 09645292 http://hdl.handle.net/10986/5797 EN http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/igo World Bank Journal Article India
repository_type	Digital Repository
institution_category	Foreign Institution
institution	Digital Repositories
building	World Bank Open Knowledge Repository
collection	World Bank
language	EN
topic	Analysis of Education I210 Economic Development: Human Resources Human Development Income Distribution Migration O150
spellingShingle	Analysis of Education I210 Economic Development: Human Resources Human Development Income Distribution Migration O150 Goyal, Sangeeta Inside the House of Learning : The Relative Performance of Public and Private Schools in Orissa
geographic_facet	India
relation	http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/igo
description	Empirical evidence shows that the quality of learning in public schools is very low in India. There is also a robust belief that private schools offer better-quality learning at a lower cost and are a cost-effective alternative to public schools. Most of the evidence on which this latter claim is based does not correct for selection bias--students who go to private schools may differ systematically from students who go to public schools on observable and unobservable characteristics. In this context, it is entirely plausible that public schools may be no worse or even better than private schools although the latter may still be more cost-effective. In this paper, we use a strategy suggested by Altonji, Elder, and Taber to estimate selection bias in the positive private school effect on test scores. We use test scores data on Grade Four students attending public and private schools in the eastern state of Orissa in India. Our findings suggest that there is a true private school effect as only 12-13% of the adjusted test score difference is due to selection on unobserved factors.
format	Journal Article
author	Goyal, Sangeeta
author_facet	Goyal, Sangeeta
author_sort	Goyal, Sangeeta
title	Inside the House of Learning : The Relative Performance of Public and Private Schools in Orissa
title_short	Inside the House of Learning : The Relative Performance of Public and Private Schools in Orissa
title_full	Inside the House of Learning : The Relative Performance of Public and Private Schools in Orissa
title_fullStr	Inside the House of Learning : The Relative Performance of Public and Private Schools in Orissa
title_full_unstemmed	Inside the House of Learning : The Relative Performance of Public and Private Schools in Orissa
title_sort	inside the house of learning : the relative performance of public and private schools in orissa
publishDate	2012
url	http://hdl.handle.net/10986/5797
_version_	1764396332075712512

Inside the House of Learning : The Relative Performance of Public and Private Schools in Orissa

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