Working Papers
Teacher mobility to a high-cost urban area: A discrete-choice experiment in Portugal (Job Market Paper)
with Pedro Freitas and Luís Catela Nunes
Abstract: The design of new policies to attract and retain new teachers has been a top issue in many educational systems. In this work, we focus on which incentives work best in attracting teachers to hard-to-staff high-cost urban areas. We conducted a discrete-choice experiment with approximately 800 teachers from 170 school clusters in Portugal, a country where teacher shortages are expected to worsen in the coming years. Alternatives differ in terms of school contract attributes related to location, salary, and stability. We find that substantial salary increases are needed to incentivize teachers to move to Lisbon, a high-cost urban area with severe teacher shortages. The results also provide insight into how to design cost-efficient incentives by taking into account the observed heterogeneity in teacher preferences in terms of several of their characteristics such as gender, experience, and personal and material ties. We suggest that bonuses varying with distance and targeted to regions with higher scarcity may be an effective way to address shortages. Finally, we estimate a supply curve to quantify the additional expenditure in salary increases needed to attract teachers to Lisbon.
Measuring school quality in Portugal: A value-added approach
with Pedro Freitas, Luís Catela Nunes and Ana Balcão Reis
Abstract: The value-added methodology is used in many countries to rank schools for both accountability and school choice purposes. We applied the value-added methodology to Portugal in the upper secondary schooling, using administrative data from 2007 to 2018. In particular, we analyzed the effect of the school in the students’ score in the 12th grade national exams, controlling for baseline scores (in this case, 9th grade national exams) and other student characteristics. In order to account for noisy estimates, these estimates were adjusted by applying an empirical Bayes approach. According to our estimates, a one standard deviation (SD) improvement in school value-added corresponds to an increase in standardized test scores by about 0.13 SD in Portuguese and 0.2 SD in Mathematics. We then allowed for school quality to vary over time and estimated the bias in forecasting schools' impacts on student achievement from omitting a set of parental characteristics which are only available for public schools. A small bias was found for Portuguese scores and a moderate one for Mathematics. We also investigated the heterogeneity in value-added by baseline score and find that the standard deviations are higher for lower levels of initial achievement.
Sources of inequality in Portugal's educational achievement
with Beatriz César, Pedro Freitas and Ana Balcão Reis
Master thesis co-supervision
The role of socioeconomic factors in the evolving learning disparities between public and private schools: What do PISA results tell about Portugal
with Mariavittoria Ludovico and Luís Catela Nunes
Master thesis co-supervision
Work in Progress
The role of management practices on educational outcomes in Vietnam
with Pedro Carneiro, Anusha Guha and Sonya Krutikova
Abstract: This study explores the impact of management practices on educational outcomes in Vietnam, using survey data based on the World Management Survey adapted for schools in developing countries. Outcomes include test scores, non-cognitive skills, executive functioning and teaching quality.
Publications
Understanding the private-public school performance gap in PISA: Evidence from Portugal
with Pedro Freitas, Luís Catela Nunes and Ana Balcão Reis
Abstract: We analyse the PISA-reported convergence in the performance of private and public schools in Portugal. When PISA sampling weights are used, the number of students enrolled in those types of schools and specific grades/tracks of study differs significantly from official population figures. To account for those differences, we apply a post-stratification adjustment; however, sample sizes are small, resulting in estimates with low precision for several subgroups. We propose recommendations for improving the handling of these issues in future PISA cycles. In an additional analysis, we also account for changes in the composition of the student population. When all factors are considered, the convergence in scores is far less impressive than reported. For instance, in Science, after adjusting the sampling weights and removing population composition effects, the reported convergence of 46 points between private and public schools from 2015 to 2018 amounts to only 9 points. The decomposition and sample adjustment methods used in this paper can be easily adapted to other contexts.
Policy Reports
Trends in student achievement in Portugal: What does PISA tell us
with Pedro Freitas and Luís Catela Nunes
Abstract: This report reflects on the evolution of student performance in Portugal, specifically among 15-year-olds, over the past 20 years, based on an analysis of PISA results. It highlights the influence of parental education and socioeconomic context on students' performance in the PISA tests.