Self-Selection and Student Achievement

Honggao Cao

HEW from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: Students in any schools are not a random collection from the population. They become schoolmates because of their parents' selections of school quality that are contingent on their genetic abilities and family background. Even specified correctly, the conventional educational production functions cannot be used to find the effects of school inputs or quality. Therefore, the weak or zero relationship between school inputs and student achievement widely documented in the literature by no means implies that school inputs or quality does not matter. Further, since students enter schools by self-selection, any observed differences in student achievement between public and private schools do not necessarily mean that these schools have any differences in the effectiveness of operation.

Keywords: Self-selection; school quality; educational production function; student achievement (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 24 pages
Date: 2005-01-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu, nep-lab and nep-ure
Note: Type of Document - pdf; pages: 24
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wpa:wuwphe:0501003

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