School Choice in Latin America: Does migration matter?

XI Arnoldshain Seminar June 25 – 28, 2013, Antwerp, Belgium School Choice in Latin America: Does migration matter? Héctor R. Gertel Florencia Cámara Gonzalo D. Decándido Manuel Gigena Instituto de Economía y Finanzas Universidad Nacional de Córdoba

Presentation Structure • Motivation • Literature review • Objective • Modeling school choice • Results • Conclusions

Motivation The education sector has recently faced complex transformation processes affecting its private/public structure Publicly run schools are financed with taxes while the privately run schools rely mostly on fees and contribution from the family. However, the number of privately run schools and of the quantity of students enrolled in them have increased. The 22% of Latin American secondary students assisted to privately run schools in 2010 However, there is an important heterogeneity between countries

… • The presence of extracurricular activities offered by schools and the migrant status of families have often been neglected in studies of school choice • The migrant status of families may restrict the choice about sending their children to a privately run school • Extracurricular activities offered by schools have been shown to be an important determinant of school choice in Argentina (Gertel, Cámara & Decándido, 2012) • Variance analyses have shown independent effect for both variables on the decision to attend to a privately run school • How important is the independent contribution of these aspects on school choice?

Literature review • The first ideas in defense of public management of education, in the U.S., are in Mann (1855) & Dewey (1916). The school aims to educate citizens who understand and appreciate democracy, which is achieved in publicly run schools. • Milton Friedman (1955): put into question the extent of state responsibility in education. While recognizing the state finance of education, he argued that the main role of the state was to ensure the functioning of educational market. • Advocates:Chubb & Moe (1990), the existence of a diverse educational offering allows choosing the school that best suits the preference of the family, resulting in educational gains for students. Because of this, there is a higher innovation in the educational market. • Critics:Fuller & Elmore (1996), the expansion of the supply of privately run schools increases the segregation and social inequality. According to Hannaway & Carnoy (1993), increased competition between schools would be irrelevant if attention is mainly focused on school management and not on classroom management.

School choice under uncertainty • Classical assumption: perfect knowledge about the student potential. It can not be sustained. • Uncertainty and extracurricular activities • Brown (1992) introduced an alternative approach of school choice in which uncertainty plays a central role. • There is uncertainty about the ability of a student and the returns that they will get in the future • Families will prefer curricular diversity in order to minimize the risk of choosing a mode that does not correspond with their children skills • Aware of this fact, both types of schools tend to resemble, each offering a combination of contents that suits the preferences of families • Consequently, the privately run schools have to differentiate themselves if they want to “attract clients”. Apparently, the strategy of including extracurricular activities plays an important role in this regard

School choice under uncertainty • Uncertainty and immigration • The literature that addresses the issue of immigration and schooling in developed countries is abundant, some are: • Entorf & Minou (2004), OECD (2012): Differences in educational outcomes between native and immigrant students. • Gould, Lavy & Paserman (2009), Brunello & Rocco (2013): How a higher share of immigrants affect the academic results of natives. • Betts & Fairlie (2003): The “flight” of natives students from publicly run schools into privately run schools because of the increase of immigrant students. • Bernal (2005), Escardíbul & Villarroya (2010): The school choice and concentration in public schools of immigrants. • However, little has been written about uncertainty and migrant status on school choice decisions in developing countries, including those of Latin America

Objetive The aim of the paper is Analyze the main factors that influence parent´s choice about sending their children to a privately run school in Latin America With special attention to the migrant status of families and extracurricular activities offered by schools

Latin American countries studied • The Latin American countries studied are those in PISA 2009 : • Argentina • Brazil • Chile • Colombia • Mexico • Panama • Peru • Uruguay

Modeling School Choice Parents have two mutually exclusive alternatives for education of their children enroll them in a publicly run school enroll them in a privately run school • Decision is based on the available information, in order to maximize their welfare • A simple binary logit model allows us to study the factors affecting privately school choice: the determinants of school choice

… The model assume that for the family of student i, the indirect utility of having their child in a school of type j is Uij. This can be decomposed into the sum of two components: (i) the determinist component, Vij, which depends on specific characteristics of the school, student and their family, and of unknown parameters; (ii) the unobserved random component, . Following Cameron & Trivedi (2005), it can be expressed as follows: (1) (2) Wherex is a vector of variables representing characteristics of the school, the student and their family This is a simple representation of so-called Additive Random Utility Model (ARUM)

… Parents will opt for a privately run school if it gives them more utility than a public one. It is defined yi=1 if alternative 1 (private school) is chosen and yi=0 in the opposite case: Using the expression (1) and operating conveniently, it can be obtained the following expression: P(yi=1) is the probability of choosing a privately run school and it is estimated from a Logit model, under the assumption of that 0 and 1 are independently distributed and have a distribution represented by a “type I extreme value” function.

… In a Logit model, the probabily is expresed as follows: So, the odds ratio is equal to: • The odds ratio indicates the "chances" of choosing a privately run school over another public school, given the characteristics considered: • If p/(1-p)=1 the probability of choosing a privately run school is the same that the probability of choosing a publicly run school • If p/(1-p)>1 the probability of choosing a privately run school is higher than the probability of choosing a publicly run school • If p/(1-p)<1 the probability of choosing a privately run school is lower than the probability of choosing a publicly run school

Data • Source: • PISA 2009 – Latin America: • PISA is a program of internationally standardized assessments developed by UNESCO and OECD, in order to measure the preparation that has fifteen year old students to address the challenges of the global world when they leave educational systems • Processing: • Sample size: We eliminate from the sample all students located in areas where there is only one school. The final sample was of 76.874 students nested in 1.420 schools. • Sample design: Two-stage stratified sample. • Dependent Variable: Dummy of “Privately run school” (privada=1). • Variables of Interest: Dummy of first-generation immigrant (prigen=1), dummy of second-generation immigrants (seggen=1) and “index of extracurricular activities” (excuract). First-generation immigrants are those who are foreign-born and whose parents are also foreign-born. Second-generation immigrants are those who were born in the country of assessment but whose parents are foreign-born (OECD, 2011)

Control Variables • Given previous literature as well as the limitations of the PISA 2009 database for Latin America, the following control variables were selected: • Student level: “Male gender” (varon=1), “Attitude towards schools” (sirvepoco=1) and “Repetition” (repitio=1). • Household level: “Level of parent education” (pared), “Family wealth possession” (wealth) and “Mother is a housewife” (amadecasa=1). • School level: “Disciplinary climate in the classroom” (disclimam), “Teacher shortage” (tcshort), and two variables to control selectivity for residence and for performance (admires=1 and admiren=1).

Results • Determinants of school choice in Latin America (on aggregate) • Determinants of school choice by country • The immigrant status and the private school choice

Determinants of school choice in Latin America Note:*significant at 10%; ** significant at 5%; *significant at 10%. Source: own elaboration based on PISA 2009.

Determinants of school choice in Latin America • In the estimated model where no control variables where included, we found the following results: • The offering of extracurricular activities by privately run schools has a positive effect on the probability of selecting them, with a significance level of 1% • The effect of migration is negative, indicating that migrants families do prefer sending their children to publicly run schools • The effect of first-generation migrants is negative and statically significant at 1% level • The effect of second-generation migrants is also negative but it is not statically different from cero

Determinants of school choice in Latin America • After several control variables were included, we found the following: • The effect of extracurricular activities remained statistically significant, but its value was reduced • Concerning migrant status of families, no statistically significant effects were found. These results lead us to conclude that whether the family is immigrant or not in Latin America it doesn´t have a definitive influence over school choice decisions • However, it should be noted that these results may hide differences across countries

Determinants of school choice in Latin America • Brief commentary about control variables effect: • If the student has repeated a year (repitio=1) or if the student believes that the school will not help them for their future (sirvepoco=1), the probability of choosing a privately run school would be lower • If the student´s mother is a housewife (amadecasa=1), the probability of choosing a privately run school would be lower • More educated parents and higher levels of family wealth would increase the probability of choosing a privately run school

Determinants of school choice by country Note:*significant at 10%; ** significant at 5%; *significant at 10%. Source: own elaboration based on PISA 2009.

Determinants of school choice by country • As we can see in the table: • The coefficient for extracurricular activities shows that significant differences among countries exist (not shown here) • The coefficient for migrant status of families differs greatly across countries: • In Argentina and Peru, immigrant status seems to have no influence on the type of school selected. • In Brazil and Mexico, first- generation migrant students would have a smaller probability of attending a privately run school. In Mexico, a similar result was found if the student is second-generation migrant. • In Colombia, Uruguay and Panama, first-generation migrant students would have a higher probability of attending a privately run school. In Chile and Panama a similar result was found if the student is a second-generation migrant.

The immigrant status and private school choice Estimated odds ratios of choosing a privately run school instead a publicly run school, for migrant and the non migrant student population in each country and in Latin America as a whole. Note:*significant at 10%; ** significant at 5%; *significant at 10%. Source: own elaboration based on PISA 2009.

The immigrant status and private school choice • To calculate the odds ratio is conveniently to build a specific situation. • In this paper, we introduced two different representative situations: • Case (a) is representative for non migrant students • Case (b) is representative for migrant students • Both cases are based on the following assumptions: • The school does not take into account the place of residence to admit the students (admires=0) • The school does not take into account the student's performance to decide whether to admit or not the student (admirend=0) • The student is female (varon=0) • The student did not repeat any school year (repitió=0) • The student believes that the school serves for life (sirvepoco=0) • The mother is a non housewife (amadecasa=0). • The variables indicative of extracurricular activities, shortage of teachers, disciplinary climate, parents' educational level and socioeconomic status assume average values of each country, respectively.

The immigrant status and private school choice • The probability of choosing a privately run school instead of a publicly run school shows no differences between native and migrant students in Argentina, Peru and Latin America as a whole. But important differences were found for the rest of the countries: • In Brazil and Mexico, a lower probability of choosing a privately run school was found among migrants. • In Chile, Colombia, Panamá and Uruguaythe probability of choosing a privately run school was higher among migrants. • The probability that a native student in Chile attends a privately run school is higher than in Argentina, and in these two countries are higher than in the other six Latin American countries. • In Chile for every 100 students attending publicly run schools, there are 85 attending privately run schools while in Argentina for every 100 students attending public schools, there are only 44 attending privately run schools. • In the remaining six countries for every 100 students attending publicly run schools, there are less than 30 students attending privately run schools.

Conclusions School Choice in Latin American: Does migration matter? Not always. In some countries it does. • On average, taken Latin America as a whole, school choice decisions are not affected by the migrant status of students. • However, the different country situations analyzed on the paper show that there are important differences about the effect of migration on school choice: • In Argentina and Peru, immigrant status of the students would not influence the type of school that they attend. • In Brazil and Mexico, the probability of attending a privately run school would be lower if the student is of immigrant origin. • In Colombia, Uruguay and Panama if the student is first-generation migrant the probability of attending a privately run school would be higher while in Chile and Panama if the student is second-generation migrant the probability of choosing a privately run school would be higher.

Instituto de Economía y Finanzas Universidad Nacional de Córdoba School Choice in Latin America: Does migration matter? Héctor R. Gertel, Florencia Cámara, Gonzalo D. Decándido and Manuel Gigena florencia_camara@hotmail.com THANK YOU!!! This research was supported by a grant from the FONCyT Program (Ministry of Science and Technology Innovation, Argentina) under PICT 2007 Grant #803. XI Arnoldshain Seminar June 25 – 28, 2013, Antwerp, Belgium

Annex

Variables description

Descriptive statistics Source: PISA 2009 database.

School Choice in Latin America: Does migration matter?