Socio-economic factors explaining the performance of high-school students in Chile

The aim of thus paper is to examine the educational, institutional and social variables that explain students' educational achievement in secondary schools in Chile. It also analyzes the performance of the different types of schools in the country. We estimate an educational production function using data from the standardized performance test, known as the SIMCE test, taken by 2(nd) year students in 1998, and data from the Ministry of Education. First, we estimate the educational production function at the school level, using the average score of each high school. Specifically, we analyze the difference between the expected score of the school, and its effective score on the test. The expected score is predicted by the estimated production function, therefore, it takes into account the school and its students characteristics. Then, we estimate an educational production function using students' individual data. This is the first time we can use individual data to estimate the effects of different factors on students' achievement. Thins was possible because at the same time the SIMCE test was given in 1998, the Education Ministry applied a socioeconomic survey to all the families of the students involved. This information allows us to investigate the impact of different educational inputs on students' achievement. The paper concludes that one of the main challenges facing the educational policy in the coming years is to reduce the existing gap in educational performance between different types of school at the secondary level. It is necessary to attain more equity iii the Chilean educational system, this means that the learning process has to accelerate in schools where students from low-income families are concentrated. Moreover, it is necessary to avoid the segmentation, which occurs because students from low socioeconomic level tend to concentrate in specific type of schools. It is also important to emphasize that closing the gap iii education quality must not imply to neglect those schools publicly financed with high educational achievement, since they are a key factor in social mobility.