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Supply-side interventions and student learning in Guatemala

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Abstract

This paper presents estimates of production functions of reading and mathematics test scores to assess the effects of supply-side interventions, such as the provision of a community-based school management programme, bilingual education and multigrade teaching, on student learning in Guatemala. The efficiency and consistency of the estimates is improved by using seemingly unrelated regressions to account for potential correlation between test scores. Results indicate that the community-based management programme, bilingual schools and traditional schools produce comparable learning of first-graders. However, in the case of third-graders the community-based school management programme and bilingual schools produce less learning than traditional schools. The learning of both first- and third-graders is found to be diminished in the multigrade teaching approach.

Résumé

Interventions en amont et apprentissage scolaire au Guatemala – L’auteur présente une évaluation des fonctions de production dans les résultats de tests de lecture et de calcul, destinés à apprécier les effets sur l’apprentissage scolaire au Guatemala des interventions en amont ou au niveau de l’offre, à savoir la mise en place d’un programme communautaire de gestion scolaire, l’enseignement bilingue et les classes à plusieurs niveaux. L’efficacité et la cohérence des évaluations ont été améliorées en utilisant des régressions apparemment sans rapport, en vue de dégager une corrélation potentielle entre les résultats aux tests. Les conclusions révèlent que le programme communautaire de gestion, les écoles bilingues et les écoles classiques engendrent un apprentissage comparable chez les élèves des cours préparatoires. Mais au niveau de la troisième année scolaire, le programme communautaire de gestion scolaire et les écoles bilingues génèrent moins d’apprentissage que les écoles traditionnelles. Il s’avère en outre que l’apprentissage en première et troisième classes est moindre avec la méthode des classes multi-niveaux.

Zusammenfassung

Angebotsseitige Eingriffe und Lernerfolge von Schülerinnen und Schülern in Guatemala – In diesem Artikel werden Schätzungen der Produktionsfunktionen von Testergebnissen in Lesen und Mathematik dargestellt, um die Auswirkungen angebotsseitiger Eingriffe, wie der Bereitstellung eines gemeinwesenbasierten Schulmanagementprogramms, zweisprachiger Bildung und jahrgangsübergreifenden Unterrichts, auf den Lernerfolg von Schülerinnen und Schülern in Guatemala zu bewerten. Mittels scheinbar voneinander unabhängiger Regressionen sollen potenzielle Korrelationen zwischen Testergebnissen erfasst und damit der Nutzeffekt und die Konsistenz der Schätzungen gesteigert werden. Die Ergebnisse deuten darauf hin, dass das gemeinwesenbasierte Managementprogramm, zweisprachige Schulen und traditionelle Schulen bei Erstklässlern vergleichbare Lernerfolge erzielen. Bei Drittklässlern jedoch führen das gemeinwesenbasierte Schulmanagementprogramm und zweisprachige Schulen zu geringeren Lernerfolgen als traditionelle Schulen. Der jahrgangsübergreifende Unterricht zeitigte bei Kindern der ersten wie auch der dritten Klassen geringere Lernerfolge.

Resumen

Intervenciones por el lado de la oferta y aprendizaje de los estudiantes en Guatemala – Este trabajo presenta estimaciones sobre funciones de producción de lectura y puntajes de pruebas matemáticas para evaluar los efectos que tienen sobre el aprendizaje de los estudiantes en Guatemala las intervenciones por el lado de la oferta, tales como la provisión de un programa comunitario de gestión escolar, educación bilingüe y enseñanza multigrado. La eficiencia y consistencia de las estimaciones se aumentan usando regresiones que, aparentemente, no guardan relación entre ellas, para dar cuenta de una potencial correlación entre los puntajes de las pruebas. Los resultados indican que el programa comunitario de gestión escolar, las escuelas bilingües y las escuelas tradicionales producen un aprendizaje comparable en los alumnos de primer grado. Sin embargo, en el caso de los alumnos de tercer grado, el programa comunitario de gestión escolar y las escuelas bilingües producen menos aprendizaje que las escuelas tradicionales. También se comprueba que tanto el aprendizaje de los alumnos de primer grado como el de los de tercer grado están subvalorados en el enfoque de la enseñanza multigrado.

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Notes

  1. In Guatemala, primary school has six grades. The official age for starting grade one is seven.

  2. A production function expresses the measurable output of an enterprise for all combinations of inputs.

  3. Many standardised tests do not depict important aspects of student learning such as creativity and critical thinking as they generally focus on a given number of subjects (e.g. reading and mathematics). In addition, standardised tests are prone to testing-teaching mismatches, omitted items, and confounded causation problems (see Popham 1999). However, when effectively planned and implemented, standardised test scores offer a reasonable measure of student learning. Despite the issues mentioned above, standardised tests are widely used to evaluate the performance of education systems worldwide.

  4. According to the World Bank (2003), the illiteracy rate in Guatemala was 31% in 2000. The average schooling was 4.3 years for individuals over 14 years of age. Consequently, it would be unrealistic to require council members to have higher levels of schooling to implement a PRONADE school, particularly in remote rural areas.

  5. The term opportunity cost refers to alternatives that must be forgone in order to attend school such as income that could be earned if the student worked during school hours.

  6. MATERIAL = (CHALK + PAPER + MARKERS + POSTERBOARD)/4, where all are dummy variables equal to one if the teacher reports to be provided with these materials.

    TRAINING = (SPANISH + SPANISH AS SECOND LANGUAGE + MATHEMATICS + NATURAL SCIENCES + SOCIAL STUDIES + MAYAN CULTURE + INTERCULTURAL ISSUES + MULTIGRADE METHODOLOGY + ACTIVE METHODOLOGY + CIVIC EDUCATION + ETHICS + MAYAN LANGUAGE)/13, where all are dummy variables equal to one if the teacher reports having been trained in these subjects.

    SCHENVIRON = 1 − (BLOW + MOCKERY + FIGHT + THEFT)/4, where all are dummy variables equal to one if the student reports having suffered these incidents.

  7. See Table 3 for definition of variables.

  8. See Greene (2007) for a detailed review of seemingly unrelated regressions.

  9. OLS and SUR also yield same estimates when error terms are uncorrelated (i.e. σuv = 0).

  10. The Wald test is used to test the hypothesis that an estimated parameter is equal to a given value. This tests compares the square of the difference between estimated parameters and hypothesised values to a χ2 distribution.

  11. Estimation results are inconclusive given that DIGEBI is significant for reading test scores but insignificant for mathematics test scores. However, SUR estimations allow for (Wald) testing the joint hypothesis that both test scores are lower for students in DIGEBI schools. This is another advantage of SUR over traditional OLS regressions.

  12. Alternative models were also investigated. For instance, a fixed-effect model for departments (administrative states) was estimated in an attempt to control for unobservable community characteristics and thus reduce potential omitted variables bias. Models disaggregating the three indices were also estimated. Results are robust across different model specifications. These results are available from the author upon request.

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  1. Department of Economics, Fairfield University, 1073 North Benson Road, Fairfield, CT, 06824, USA

    William F. Vásquez

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  1. William F. Vásquez
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Correspondence to William F. Vásquez.

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Vásquez, W.F. Supply-side interventions and student learning in Guatemala. Int Rev Educ 58, 9–33 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11159-012-9263-y

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