Kiel Working Papers, Kiel Institute for World Economics
No 1099:
Class-Size Effects in School Systems Around the World: Evidence from Between-Grade Variation in TIMSS
Ludger Wößmann and Martin R. West
Abstract: We employ a combination of school fixed effects and IV
estimation to estimate the effect of class size on student performance in
18 countries. Using the random part of the class-size variation between two
adjacent grades within individual schools allows us to identify causal
class-size effects. Conventional estimates of class-size effects are shown
to be severely biased in most school systems by within- and between-school
sorting of students. Differences in our estimates across countries suggest
that it is misleading to generalize results from one school system to
others. While we find sizable beneficial effects of smaller classes in
Greece and Iceland, the possibility of even small effects is rejected in
Japan and Singapore. In 11 countries, we rule out large class-size effects.
The existence of class-size effects, and the lack thereof, in different
school systems appears to be related to the relative quality of the
teaching force.
Keywords: educational production, class size, student sorting, school fixed effects, instrumental variables, TIMSS; (follow links to similar papers)
JEL-Codes: I2; (follow links to similar papers)
65 pages, March 2002
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