Book Review

Title: Increasing Quality and Equity: The Case of Chile

Author: Andrea Paula Tokman

Andrea Paula Tokman is a Doctor in Philosophy in Economics and finished her doctorate degree at the University of California, Berkeley USA. Her book entitled Increasing Quality and Equity: The Case of Chile was one of the many attempts to study the kind of education that is offered both in public and private schools in Chile considering the voucher-style system that is the Chilean government is giving subsidy to both private and public schools.

What is it all about?

In 1981 The Chilean Military government implemented the voucher style system of publicly funded education that transfers funds from the Central government to bothe public and private schools. The voucher style system is equivalent to the Service Contracting Schemes here in the Philippine. This Service Contracting Scheme is a form of subsidy to deserving young students who are enrolled in the Private schools. The study of Andrea is anchored on the idea of Friedman (1955) that private schools are more efficient than the public schools however, in her study it proves that private subsidized schools don't appear to have better learning conditions than public schools. Public schools tend to be larger in terms of enrollment and have larger classes. Subsidized private schools don't have better teachers. They have fewer teachers with a degree in education and with teachers with less years of experience. Further Private schools have high percentage of female teachers. Another significant finding of her study is the 5-6 percentage point difference in private subsidized and public schools' average test scores could be very possibly just be the effect of non-random assignment of students into schools having better students and not really teaching them better. Another result of her study is that the public schools are neither uniformly worse nor uniformly better than private subsidized schools but rather public schools appear to be relatively more effective for students from disadvantaged backgrounds.

Highlights
Schools with higher paternal education and income tend to perform better and maternal education matters more than paternal education for achievement. Paternal education is negatively correlated with the test scores in public schools but positively correlated in private subsidized schools. Public schools are neither uniformly worse nor uniformly better than private schools. Rather, public schools appear to be more effective for students from disadvantaged background.