Inter-American Development Bank
facebook
twitter
youtube
linkedin
instagram
Abierto al públicoBeyond BordersCaribbean Development TrendsCiudades SosteniblesEnergía para el FuturoEnfoque EducaciónFactor TrabajoGente SaludableGestión fiscalGobernarteIdeas MatterIdeas que CuentanIdeaçãoImpactoIndustrias CreativasLa Maleta AbiertaMoviliblogMás Allá de las FronterasNegocios SosteniblesPrimeros PasosPuntos sobre la iSeguridad CiudadanaSostenibilidadVolvamos a la fuente¿Y si hablamos de igualdad?Home
Citizen Security and Justice Creative Industries Development Effectiveness Early Childhood Development Education Energy Envirnment. Climate Change and Safeguards Fiscal policy and management Gender and Diversity Health Labor and pensions Open Knowledge Public management Science, Technology and Innovation  Trade and Regional Integration Urban Development and Housing Water and Sanitation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to secondary menu
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

Caribbean Development Trends

  • HOME
  • CATEGORIES
    • Agribusiness
    • Antigua and Barbuda
    • Barbados
    • BehaviorChange
    • Belize
    • Bermuda
    • biodiversity
    • Blockchain
    • Caribbean
    • Caribbean Culture and Media
    • Climate Change
    • Creative Economy
    • Crime Prevention and Citizen Security
    • Data and Knowledge
    • De-risking
    • Dominica
    • Dutch
    • Early Childhood Development
    • Economic Growth
    • Education Policy
    • energy
    • entrepreneurship
    • Environmental and Climate Change
    • Events
    • Extractives
    • Finance
    • Fiscal Rules
    • gender
    • Governance and Regulatory Policy Reforms
    • Grenada
    • Guyana
    • Haiti
    • Health
    • Health Policy
    • Hurricane
    • Hurricane Irma
    • infrastructure
    • Innovation and change
    • Intellectual Property
    • IWD
    • Jamaica
    • JumpCaribbean
    • Labor
    • Labour Markets
    • MOOC
    • Music
    • Natural Disasters
    • Nurturing Institutions
    • OECS
    • Podcast
    • Poverty
    • Private Sector and Entrepreneurship
    • Saint Kitts and Nevis
    • Saint Lucia
    • Saint Vincent and Grenadines
    • skills
    • Sports for Development
    • Suriname
    • Technology
    • The Bahamas
    • The Blue Economy
    • Transportation
    • Tourism
    • Trinidad and Tobago
    • Uncategorized
    • VAWG
    • Webinar
    • women
    • Women for Change
    • youth
  • Country Offices
    • Bahamas
    • Barbados
    • Guyana
    • Jamaica
    • Trinidad and Tobago
    • Suriname
  • Press Releases
    • Bahamas
    • Barbados
    • Guyana
    • Jamaica
    • Trinidad and Tobago
    • Suriname
  • Authors

Do Test Scores Determine School Quality?

August 3, 2022 by Diether W. Beuermann Leave a Comment


Student performance on standardized tests is typically the main measure of school quality. Important decisions (such as school closures, the design of teacher performance pay schemes, and school accountability procedures) often rely on test-score metrics. These metrics may be simple test-score averages or more sophisticated measures of school effectiveness at improving test scores. The more sophisticated measures approximate the specific contribution of each school to the improvement of students’ outcomes and are often called value-added.

However, is it the case that schools that improve academic test scores are the same schools that also improve important longer-run outcomes such as crime, risky behaviors, college attendance, and earnings? If not, basing policy decisions solely on test-score metrics (which is common) may not improve the broader adult outcomes that policymakers and parents may value.

Can test scores be interpreted as a summary measure of school quality?

In a recently published study at the Review of Economic Studies, jointly authored by Diether W. Beuerman (Inter-American Development Bank), C. Kirabo Jackson (Northwestern University), Laia Navarro-Sola (Stockholm University), and Francisco Pardo (University of Texas at Austin), we use administrative data covering the full population of Trinidad and Tobago to answer this critical question for the first time.

Our study shows that schools provide meaningful contributions to the trajectories of many academic and non-academic outcomes, such as test scores, school dropout, youth crime, teen motherhood, and adult formal employment. However, the relationship between the contributions of each school to the improvement of tests scores and the contributions of the same schools to the improvement of other outcomes is surprisingly low. For example, the correlations between improvements on test scores and improvements on other important outcomes such as school completion, non-teen motherhood,  or being formally employed in adulthood lie between 0.04 and 0.15. These results imply that school output is multidimensional, such that schools that improve test scores are often not those that improve outcomes related to broader adult well-being (which parents may value). Accordingly, policymakers should be cautious (and thoughtful) regarding using test-score metrics as the sole measure in accountability systems and incentive pay schemes, and should instead adopt a more holistic view of school quality.

Do parents look beyond test scores when choosing schools for their children?

Our study then seeks to better understand parental preferences for schools. We do so by linking parents’ ranked lists of schools to the estimated contributions of each school to the improvement of the different academic and non-academic outcomes. Our results uncover several novel findings. First, parents of higher-achieving children assign higher rankings to schools that display relatively larger contributions to the improvement of test scores. Second, looking at non-academic outcomes, parents also priviledge schools that reduce youth arrests, reduce teen births, and increase adult formal labor market participation.

These results suggest that parents may use reasonable measures of school quality when making investment decisions for their children—a requirement for the potential benefits of school choice. The fact that parents do not only choose schools that improve academics but also those that improve non-academic and longer-run outcomes suggests that the benefits of school choice may extend to a wide range of outcomes above and beyond test scores. This result, therefore, implies that policy evaluations based solely on test scores may be misleading about the welfare effects of school choice.

We also document key differences in the choices between parents of low-achieving students and high-achieving students: Parents of low-achievers value schools that are effective at improving non-test outcomes relatively more than schools that are effective at improving test scores, while the opposite is true for parents of  high-achievers. This suggests that market forces may drive competition more strongly to raise test scores among schools serving high-achieving populations and to raise non-academic outcomes among schools serving low-achieving populations. If these differences reflect parents’ true preferences, this may be efficient. However, if they reflect differences in information, there may be value to aid the school choice process with the provision of information to parents regarding the effectiveness of schools at improving a wide array of both academic and non-academic outcomes (as opposed to only school averages of the outcomes). This may improve the decisions of all parents and could increase the potential allocative efficiencies and competitive benefits of school choice.


Filed Under: Caribbean Conversations, Education, Innovation & Change, Labour & Learning

Diether W. Beuermann

Diether W. Beuermann is a Lead Economist in the Caribbean Country Department of the Inter-American Development Bank. He has led research and data collection projects in various countries, including Barbados, Colombia, Guyana, Jamaica, Peru, Russia, Suriname, The Bahamas, Democratic Republic of Congo, Trinidad and Tobago, and the United States. His research has covered the effects of different information and communication technologies on agricultural profitability, child labor, academic performance, pre-natal care, and neo-natal health. He has also conducted research on the effectiveness of participatory budgeting, the short- and long-run effects of educational quality, the multidimensional nature of school causal effects, the determinants of school choice, the effectiveness of math-focused parenting programs, the role of remittances as a social insurance mechanism, the effects of early-life weather shocks on short- and long-term human capital accumulation, the effects of public health insurance on health outcomes and labor supply, the effects of behavioral-based entrepreneurship training on firm profitability, the effects of blue-collar crime on financial access and credit prices of affected firms, and whether and how conditional cash transfers may affect the effectiveness of other human capital development policies. He has published in several leading international peer-reviewed journals, including the Review of Economic Studies, American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, Journal of Human Resources, Journal of Health Economics, Journal of Development Economics, and World Development. He holds a B.A. in Business Management and a B.Sc. in Economics from the Universidad de Lima, a M.Sc. in Finance from the University of Durham, and a M.A. and Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Maryland-College Park.

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

Follow Us

Subscribe

Search

Caribbean Dev Trends

We provide unique and timely insights on the Caribbean and its political, social, and economic development. At the IDB, we strive to improve lives in the Caribbean by creating vibrant and resilient economies where people are safe, productive and happy.

Similar posts

  • Can Parents Recognize School Benefits Beyond Short-Run Academic Achievement?
  • Battle of the Sexes – Who is Underachieving?
  • How Smart Data Management Can Solve Caribbean Policy Disputes
  • At-Risk Young Men in the Bahamas: An Endangered Species?
  • Doing Business in the Caribbean, or Not?

Footer

Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo
facebook
twitter
youtube
youtube
youtube

Blog posts written by Bank employees:

Copyright © Inter-American Development Bank ("IDB"). This work is licensed under a Creative Commons IGO 3.0 Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives. (CC-IGO 3.0 BY-NC-ND) license and may be reproduced with attribution to the IDB and for any non-commercial purpose. No derivative work is allowed. Any dispute related to the use of the works of the IDB that cannot be settled amicably shall be submitted to arbitration pursuant to the UNCITRAL rules. The use of the IDB's name for any purpose other than for attribution, and the use of IDB's logo shall be subject to a separate written license agreement between the IDB and the user and is not authorized as part of this CC- IGO license. Note that link provided above includes additional terms and conditions of the license.


For blogs written by external parties:

For questions concerning copyright for authors that are not IADB employees please complete the contact form for this blog.

The opinions expressed in this blog are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the IDB, its Board of Directors, or the countries they represent.

Attribution: in addition to giving attribution to the respective author and copyright owner, as appropriate, we would appreciate if you could include a link that remits back the IDB Blogs website.



Privacy Policy

Copyright © 2023 · Magazine Pro on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in

Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo

Aviso Legal

Las opiniones expresadas en estos blogs son las de los autores y no necesariamente reflejan las opiniones del Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo, sus directivas, la Asamblea de Gobernadores o sus países miembros.

facebook
twitter
youtube
We use cookies on our website to give you the most relevant experience by remembering your preferences and repeat visits. By clicking “Accept”, you consent to the use of ALL the cookies.
Cookie settingsACCEPT
Manage consent

Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
Necessary
Always Enabled

Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.

Non-necessary

Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.

SAVE & ACCEPT