What is a Good School, and Can Parents Tell? Evidence on the Multidimensionality of School Output

Diether Beuermann, C. Kirabo Jackson (), Laia Navarro-Sola () and Francisco Pardo ()
Additional contact information
Laia Navarro-Sola: Northwestern University
Francisco Pardo: Inter-American Development Bank

No 2018-095, Working Papers from Human Capital and Economic Opportunity Working Group

Abstract: Is a school's impact on high-stakes test scores a good measure of its overall impact on students? Do parents value school impacts on high-stakes tests, longer-run outcomes, or both? To answer the first question, we apply quasi-experimental methods to data from Trinidad and Tobago and estimate the causal impacts of individual schools on several outcomes. Schools' impacts on high-stakes tests are weakly related to impacts on low-stakes tests, dropout, crime, teen motherhood, and formal labor market participation. To answer the second question, we link estimated school impacts to parents' ranked lists of schools and employ discrete choice models to estimate parental preferences. Parents value schools that causally improve high- stakes test scores conditional on average outcomes, proximity, and peer quality. Consistent with parents valuing the multidimensional output of schools, parents of high-achieving girls prefer schools that increase formal labor market participation, and parents of high-achieving boys prefer schools that reduce crime.

Keywords: test scores; high stakes examinations; Trinidad and Tobago; parental investments (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I20 J00 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lab and nep-ure
Note: M
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
http://humcap.uchicago.edu/RePEc/hka/wpaper/Beuerm ... t-is-good-school.pdf First version, December 10, 2018 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: What is a Good School, and Can Parents Tell? Evidence on the Multidimensionality of School Output (2023)
Working Paper: What is a Good School, and Can Parents Tell?: Evidence on The Multidimensionality of School Output (2019)
Working Paper: What is a Good School, and Can Parents Tell? Evidence on the Multidimensionality of School Output (2018)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hka:wpaper:2018-095

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Human Capital and Economic Opportunity Working Group Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Jennifer Pachon ().