Predicting school dropout with administrative data: new evidence from Guatemala and Honduras

Melissa Adelman, Francisco Haimovich, Andrés Ham and Emmanuel Vazquez

No 8142, Policy Research Working Paper Series from The World Bank

Abstract: Across Latin America, school dropout is a growing concern, because of its negative social and economic consequences. Although a wide range of interventions hold potential to reduce dropout rates, policy makers in many countries must first address the basic question of how to target limited resources effectively for such interventions. Identifying who is most likely to drop out and, therefore, who should be prioritized for targeting, is a prediction problem that has been addressed in a rich set of research in countries with strong education system data. This paper makes use of newly established administrative data systems in Guatemala and Honduras, to estimate some of the first dropout prediction models for lower-middle-income countries. These models can correctly identify 80 percent of sixth grade students who will drop out in the transition to lower secondary school, performing as well as models used in the United States and providing more accurate results than other commonly used targeting approaches.

Keywords: Educational Institutions&Facilities; Educational Policy and Planning; Economics of Education; Educational Policy and Planning - Ministry of Education; Educational Policy and Planning - Institutional Development (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017-07-10
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Journal Article: Predicting school dropout with administrative data: new evidence from Guatemala and Honduras (2018)
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