Revistas Académicas WoS

School closure and educational attainment: Evidence from a market-based system

This paper studies the effect of school closure in the Chilean market-oriented educational system. Between 2002 and 2011 the system exhibited a large turnover: 1282 schools closed -roughly one-tenth of the current stock- and 2350 new schools entered, mostly private-voucher schools. We use a large panel of administrative data, which contains individual students' academic achievement and socio-demographic characteristics, to estimate some of the potential educational costs of this dynamics. We identify a causal effect of school closures on school dropouts and grade retention. School closure increases the probability of high-school dropout between 49 and 68% (1.8 and 2.5 percentage points). Also, school exit implies between 3.9 and 4.4 percentage points increase in the probability of grade retention in fifth grade.
ECONOMICS OF EDUCATION REVIEW, Vol. 65, pp. 1 - 17, 2018
Autor(es): Grau Nicolas, Hojman Daniel, Mizala Alejandra