In this work, leading researchers from the United States and Europe report on new findings on the effect of education on equal opportunity, using economic and statistical techniques to assess the results of education policy reform in countries including the United States, Britain, Sweden, Germany, and Italy. Much educational research today is focused on assessing reforms that are intended to create equal opportunity for all students. Many current policies aim at concentrating extra resources on the disadvantaged. The state-of-the-art research in "Schools and the Equal Opportunity Problem" suggests, however, that even sizeable differential spending on the disadvantaged will not yield an equality of results. In this CESifo volume, leading scholars from the United States and Europe use the tools of economics to assess the outcome of efforts to solve education's equal opportunity problem in a range of countries, including the United States, Britain, Germany, Sweden, and Italy. The evidence shows some routes for advancement - testing with high performance standards, for example, and well-designed school choice - but also raises considerable doubts about whether many current school policies are effective in dramatically altering the opportunity structure. The evidence presented also calls into question the idea that causal peer effects are very strong. The contributors examine such topics as the link between education and parental income, the problematic past research on peer effects, tracking, the distribution of educational outcomes, human capital policy aimed at disadvantaged students, and private/public school choice.
The problem 1
1 Introduction : schools and the equal opportunity problem by Paul E. Peterson and Ludger Woessmann 3
2 Education expansion and intergenerational mobility in Britain by Stephen Machin 29
3 Education and earnings over the life cycle : longitudinal age earnings profiles from Sweden by Sofia Sandgren 51
II Solutions A : change the peer group? 71
4 Peer effects in North Carolina public schools by Jacob Vigdor and Thomas Nechyba 73
5 The heterogeneous effect of selection in UK secondary schools by Fernando Galindo-Rueda and Anna Vignoles 103
6 The optimal timing of school tracking : a general model with calibration for Germany by Giorgio Brunello and Massimo Giannini and Kenn Ariga 129
III Solutions B : refocus resources? 157
7 Some U.S. evidence on how the distribution of educational outcomes can be changed by Eric A. Hanushek 159
8 The effectiveness of human-capital policies for disadvantaged groups in the Netherlands by Edwin Leuven and Hessel Oosterbeek 191
9 Equalizing opportunity for racial and socioeconomic groups in the United States through educational-finance reform by Julian R. Betts and John E. Roemer 209
IV Solutions or aggravations? : standards and choice 239
10 Educational reform and disadvantaged students in the United States by John H. Bishop and Ferran Mane 241
11 The impact of school choice on sorting by ability and socioeconomic factors in English secondary education by Simon Burgess and Brendan McConnell and Carol Propper and Deborah Wilson 273
12 The impact of perceived public-school quality on private school choice in Italy by Daniele Checchi and Tullio Jappelli