This paper examines the patterns of pre-entry coaching and corresponding investment in private tutoring before and after the introduction of the Unified State Exam (the USE). We estimate the effectiveness of private tutoring in 2012 – a few years after the USE became a prerequisite for...

Here is an analysis of the effect of the ISO 9000 certification on the economical results of Russian companies through the use of the propensity score matching (PSM) method, a method which had proven itself reliable at dealing with the selection problems that were highly likely to arise in this...

In this paper, we examine the relative academic effectiveness of vocational education in three countries with early tracking systems: Austria, Croatia and Hungary. Our measures of academic effectiveness are the results of an international test, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and...

High school students, across the world, prepare for college by participating in shadow education. Despite substantial investments in shadow education, however, little is known about whether it helps students prepare for college. The goal of our study is to provide rigorous evidence about the...

There is currently a large body of literature about applying knowledge gained in class to real-life situations. However, comparatively little is known about how a student’s mastery of the material affects his or her ability to transfer this knowledge to unfamiliar settings. Our research seeks...

We provide a measure of inequality of educational opportunity for 72 countries, estimated as a share of the variation in the 2009 PISA test scores that is explained by pre-determined family characteristics. Inequality of opportunity accounts for up to 40 percent of the variation in educational...

The advantage of Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study is that not only does it perform a direct cognitive assessment of students concerning these students' teachers, but also their education, work experience and the instructional strategies used in their classes. In order to...

This study examines the relationship between teaching practices aimed at raising student performance on a high stakes college entrance examination—the Russian Unified State Exam (USE) — and student performance on that test. The study uses data from a school/classroom survey of almost 3,000...

The purpose of our study is to compare the impact of an extra year of schooling on PISA achievement across several national education systems and explore why that impact may differ across systems. We first attempt to measure and compare the impact of an extra year of schooling on PISA...

Exposure to prenatal androgens affects both future behavior and life choices. However, there is still relatively limited evidence on its effects on academic performance. Moreover, the predicted effect of exposure to prenatal testosterone (T) - which is inversely correlated with the relative...