Anh Ngoc Nguyen

An Analysis of the Value Added by Secondary Schools in England: Is the Value Added Indicator of Any Value?

This paper argues that the value added score published for all publicly funded secondary schools in England is an unreliable indicator of school performance. A substantial proportion of the between-school variation in the value added score is accounted for by factors outside the schools control. These factors include several pupil-related variables such as the proportion of pupils on free school meals, the authorized absence rate of pupils and the proportion of pupils from ethnic minority backgrounds. The value added score is also related to several school characteristics such as the schools admission policy and its subject specialism. The main policy recommendation of this paper is that the value added score should not be used as a performance indicator, but should be used to gain a better understanding of why the value added score varies between schools.

Determinants of academic attainment in the United States: A quantile regression analysis of test scores

We investigate the determinants of high school students’ academic attainment in mathematics, reading and science in the United States; focusing particularly on possible differential impacts of ethnicity and family background across the distribution of test scores. Using data from the NELS2000 and employing quantile regression, we find two important results. First, the gaps in mathematics, reading and science test scores among ethnic groups vary across the conditional quantiles of the measured test scores. Specifically, Blacks and Hispanics tend to fare worse in their attainment at higher quantiles, particularly in science. Secondly, the effects of family background factors such as parental education and father’s occupation also vary across quantiles of the test score distribution. The implication of these findings is that the influence racial and family background factors may have on academic attainment, which are commonly identified on the basis of a conditional mean distribution of test scores, may not tell the whole story the attainment discourse has to note.

The Estimated Effect of Catholic Schooling on Educational Outcomes Using Propensity Score Matching

Attendance at Catholic high schools is estimated to improve math test scores and to increase high school graduation rates and enrolment in 4-year college. Propensity score matching methods are used to obtain these estimated effects, based on data from the National Educational Longitudinal Study. Since selection into Catholic schools is non-random, matching methods help to overcome the problem of choosing instruments for identifying the Catholic school effect on educational outcomes. The difference-in-differences approach is used on test score data in order to control for fixed unobservable influences on outcomes.

Ethnic and Gender Differences in Intergenerational Mobility: A Study of 26-Year-Olds in the USA

This paper uses the traditional income framework and a non-monetary framework to estimate intergenerational mobility in economic status for a sample of 26-year-old whites, blacks and Hispanics in the USA using data from the first and fifth sweeps of the National Educational Longitudinal Study (1988 and 2000). Intergenerational income mobility is found to be greater for males than for females, although there are differences between whites, blacks and Hispanics. Transition probabilities indicate that Hispanics are the most upwardly mobile in terms of educational attainment and occupational status. Ordered logits are used to estimate the impact of parental education and occupation on educational and occupational outcomes.