Managerial Practices and Students' Performance

Adriana Di Liberto, Fabiano Schivardi and Giovanni Sulis ()

No 8475, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: We study the effects of managerial practices in schools on students' outcomes. We measure managerial practices using the World Management Survey, a methodology that enables us to construct robust measures of management quality comparable across countries. We find substantial heterogeneity in managerial practices across six industrialized countries, with more centralized systems (Italy and Germany) lagging behind the more autonomous ones (Canada, Sweden, the UK, the US). For Italy, we are able to match organizational practices at the school level with students' outcomes in a math standardized test. We find that managerial practices are positively related to students' outcomes. The estimates imply that if Italy had the same managerial practices as the UK (the best performer), it would close the gap in the math OECD-PISA test with respect to the OECD average. We argue that our results are robust to selection issues and show that they are confirmed by a set of IV estimates and by a large number of robustness checks. Overall, our results suggest that policies directed at improving students' cognitive achievements should take into account principals' selection and training in terms of managerial capabilities.

Keywords: management; productivity; school principals; cognitive skills (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I2 L2 M1 O32 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 62 pages
Date: 2014-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cse, nep-edu, nep-eff, nep-hrm and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Published - published in: Economic Policy, 2015, 30 (84), 683-728

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Related works:
Journal Article: Managerial practices and student performance (2015)
Working Paper: Managerial Practices and Students' Performance (2014)
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