¿Cuáles colegios ofrecen mejor educación en Colombia?

Abstract

"This paper looks at the differences in academic achievement between students attending public and private schools. After controlling for individual and household characteristics, school infrastructure, and teacher education, at the national level as well as at the urban and rural levels, we find a significant difference in favor of private schools. This difference, as measured by test scores (ICFES scores), can be attributed to non-observable characteristics such as teachers promotion and incentive system. The disparity in scores is more notorious for medium and high income level students. In fact, at the lowest level of income, public school students achieve higher scores than those attending private schools. To asses non-observable characteristics, we compare scores of students at private schools, public schools, and educación contratada (public education managed by the Catholic Church) in 36 municipalities. The results show that there is an important difference in favor of educación contratada and also that test scores are higher in public schools than in private ones. Higher test scores at yet another public education program, Escuela Nueva, suggest that not only the differences between public and private schools are important, but also among diverse institutional arrangements inside each of these categories. Finally, the study controls for selection endogeneity, which is an innovating approach in Colombia."