Cristián Bellei

Socioeconomic school segregation in a market-oriented educational system. The case of Chile

This paper presents an empirical analysis of the socioeconomic status (SES) school segregation in Chile, whose educational system is regarded as an extreme case of a market-oriented education. The study estimated the magnitude and evolution of the SES segregation of schools at both national and local levels, and it studied the relationship between some local educational market dynamics and the observed magnitude of SES school segregation at municipal level. The main findings were: first, the magnitude of the SES segregation of both low-SES and high-SES students in Chile was very high (Duncan Index ranged from 0.50 to 0.60 in 2008); second, during the last decade, SES school segregation tended to slightly increase in Chile, especially in high schools (both public and private schools); third, private schools – including voucher schools – were more segregated than public schools for both low-SES and high-SES students; and finally, some market dynamics operating in the Chilean education (like privatization, school choice, and fee-paying) accounted for a relevant proportion of the observed variation in SES school segregation at municipal level. These findings are analyzed from an educational policy perspective in which the link between SES school segregation and market-oriented mechanisms in education plays a fundamental role.

Supporting Instructional Improvement in Low-Performing Schools to Increase Students' Academic Achievement

ABSTRACT This is an impact evaluation of the Technical Support to Failing Schools Program, a Chilean compensatory program that provided 4-year in-school technical assistance to low-performing schools to improve students’ academic achievement. The author implemented a quasi-experimental design by using difference-in-differences estimation combined with propensity scores matching procedures to estimate treatment effects. The main findings were the following: (a) the program had positive effects on fourth-grade students’ achievement in both language and mathematics; (b) program effect size was 0.23 standard deviations, and not sensitive to control for covariates; (c) there were larger effects for students in the middle part of the students’ test-score distribution; (d) after the intervention had ceased, the program impact declined rapidly; and (e) the program reduced grade retention by 1.5 percentage points.

School improvement trajectories: an empirical typology

ABSTRACT This paper is based on a multiple case study of schools which have been identified as improving their performance for about a decade. We proposed different criteria by which to characterize and study these improvement processes and, by applying them to our sample, we elaborated a typology of school improvement trajectories: we identified 4 different trajectories of school improvement. We called the first type restricted improvement because at its center is the management of processes that mainly target academic achievement tests; the second is incipient improvement, which is based on changes that restructure the school processes; the third identified trajectory are cases where school improvement is moving toward institutionalization, while the last are those cases where improvement has been already institutionalized and the schools have achieved high levels of educational effectiveness. We identified challenges that schools face at different stages of school improvement and discussed some related policy issues.

¿Por qué elegir una escuela privada subvencionada? Sectores medios emergentes y elección de escuela en un sistema de mercado

espanolLa propuesta de introducir mecanismos de mercado en educacion ha impulsado el debate politico y la investigacion sobre la eleccion de escuela por las familias. Chile ha sido un caso paradigmatico al respecto, implementando una comprehensiva reforma educacional neoliberal, uno de cuyos efectos mas relevantes ha sido una acelerada privatizacion, especialmente entre sectores sociales medios. El objetivo del estudio fue comprender el sentido que tiene para los padres chilenos de sectores medios elegir un colegio privado para sus hijos, para lo cual realizamos entrevistas en profundidad y grupos de discusion en dos zonas prototipicas de clase media en Santiago. Nuestros hallazgos muestran que las familias deciden orientandose esencialmente por razones sociales, procurando separarse de grupos socioeconomicamente inferiores (considerados riesgosos), lo cual les hace descartar escuelas publicas, gratuitas y no selectivas, y valorar escuelas que ofrecen un fuerte control disciplinario. Criterios educacionales son asi supeditados a la busqueda de segregacion socioeducativa. EnglishThe idea of introducing market mechanisms to education has prompted a political debate and research around school choice. Chile has been a paradigmatic case on this, implementing a comprehensive neoliberal educational reform; a relevant effect has been a rapid educational privatization, especially among the middle classes. The objective of this study was to understand the meaning of choosing a private school according to middle class parents. We conducted in depth interviews and focus groups with parents living in two middle class areas of Santiago. Our findings show that parents make decisions mainly oriented by social reasons, trying to avoid lower socioeconomic groups (considered to be risky), which makes them to discard public, free, and non-selective schools, and value schools that offer a strong disciplinary control. Thus, educational criteria are subordinated to the search for socio-educational segregation.

Measuring systematic long-term trajectories of school effectiveness improvement

ABSTRACT The objective of this study was to identify trajectories of school improvement experienced by Chilean elementary schools over the last decade. Using econometric analysis and controlling for potential confounding factors, we created an index of school performance combining outcome indicators focused on different school dimensions, and estimated the 2002/2010 evolution of school improvement for all Chilean schools with available data. Broadly, we estimated an average increase in the school performance of about 0.19 SD; nevertheless, while 41% of the schools increased their educational performance by at least 0.1 SD, 25% of the schools decreased it during the same period; we also found that improving school effectiveness was more probable among schools with lower student socioeconomic status (SES). Finally, we found that the observed school improvement trajectories tended to be non-linear; thus, we estimated that only 13.4% of the schools improved their performance in a systematic way during the entire decade.

External Technical Support for School Improvement: Critical Issues from the Chilean Experience.

To what extent school improvement processes can be initiated and sustained from the outside has been a relevant question for policy-makers seeking to increase quality in education. Since 2008, the Chilean Government is strongly promoting the use of external technical support (ETS) services to support school improvement processes, as part of the Student Priority Voucher programme, a compensatory policy that provides significant additional resource to schools serving the poorest 40% of students. Participating schools and ETS providers negotiate services and prices in a market-like dynamic. In this paper, we describe the Chilean ETS policy, discuss the ETS policy implementation, review the empirical evidence about the effects of ETS services in schools, and critically analyse the ETS policy as an instrument for school improvement. We argue that experts who are knowledgeable in the field of education have the potential to effectively support schools in need of improvement. However, brokers and external consultants providing school support in Chile within a market-oriented framework typically lack the characteristics associated with positive effects; this raises the critical issue of developing professional capacities within schools to produce genuine and sustainable improvement processes.

Educación media y juventud en los 90. Actualizando la vieja promesa

A LO LARGO DE su historia la educacion media chilena ha estado atravesada por tres grandes tensiones, tres principios que han articulado buena parte de los debates y disputas en torno suyo: i) como vincular los procesos formativos con los requerimientos provenientes del mundo de la economia —y en general del desarrollo nacional— sin por ello caer en la mera instrumentalizacion de la educacion; ii) como garantizar el efecto democratizador de la educacion —expresado en procesos amplios de movilidad social— en un marco de expansion de la cobertura; y, iii) como conciliar las necesidades de formacion general con los requerimientos de educacion especializada, al interior de un sistema unico y sin generar efectos de segmentacion socioeducativa.1 Aunque de modo aun incompleto, la Reforma de la educacion media llevada a cabo en la presente decada es una propuesta para abordar estas tensiones. El mayor desafio que el pais enfrenta en la educacion media es como formar a su juventud para anticiparse al futuro. Este ya esta surgiendo a nuestro alrededor y desde el punto de vista de la educa-