The effect of schooling on skills and knowledge in Latin America. Evidence from PISA

MARCHIONNI, MARIANA; VAZQUEZ, EMMANUEL

Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy and Practice

Taylor & Francis Online (Routledge)

Año: 2018 vol. 26 p. 489 - 515

0969-594X

In this paper, we estimate the causal effct of an extra year of schoolingon mathematics performance for seven Latin American countriesbased on PISA 2012. To that end we exploit exogenous variation instudents? birthdates around the school entry cut-of date using bothsharp and fuzzy Regression Discontinuity designs. We fid strongeffcts of an extra year of schooling in most countries, which amountto a 30% increase in PISA test scores in Brazil, 18% in Uruguay, 7% inArgentina and 6% in Costa Rica. These effcts diffr from the typicalestimates obtained from simple regressions or multilevel modelsand are large enough to allow 15-year-old students to reach higherprofiiency levels, suggesting signifiant potential gains of reducingdropout rates in the region. Finally, we stress the importance of takinginto account the effcts of school entry cut-of dates on PISA samplesto avoid making unfair international comparisons.