This project focused on the relationship between family background, school characteristics and student performance in primary schooling in Argentina, Colombia and several comparison countries. The results of the analysis suggest that there is in general a strong link between the socio-economic background of primary students and their student achievement in the PIRLS study (the PIRLS study is an international student achievement study testing the reading literacy of primary students in the fourth grade). Institutional features of the schools are weakly and resource endowments of schools only hardly related to the student performance. In an international perspective, the estimated effects of family background characteristics on student performance are relatively large in Argentina and quite modest in Colombia. A specific Argentine feature of the schooling system is the lack of performance difference between rural and urban areas. A specific feature of the Colmbian schooling system is the lack of performance difference between boys and girls which is contrarily to the emerging pattern in most of the analysed countries. In both countries, non-native students and students who do not speak Spanish at home were found to perform particularly weak. The parental occupation as well as kindergarten attendance exerted in both countries no effect on student performance. With regard to institutional settings of the educational system, the analysis revealed in Argentina a positive effect of a centralized curriculum and ability-based class formation at schools on student performance.
Micro data of several international student achievement tests, particularly the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS).
Woessmann, Ludger, with Thomas Fuchs (2004). Families, Schools and Primary-School Learning: Evidence for Argentina and Colombia in an International Perspective. Ifo Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich. Published as World Bank Policy Research Working Paper no. WPS 3537
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