Reaching the policy goal of improving student achieve­ment by adding resources to the school system has often proven elusive. By contrast, ample evidence indicates that central exit exams constitute an important feature of a school system’s institutional framework, which can hold students,...

Students in some countries do far better on international achievement tests than students in other countries. Is this all due to differences in what students bring with them to school - socio-economic background, cultural factors, and the like? Or do school systems make a difference? This essay...

The paper provides a comparative analysis of the association between student achievement and public-private partnerships (PPPs) in schooling across countries. Student-level data from the PISA international achievement test provides information on the public-private character of both operation...

We try to identify which economic factors might be responsible for the large international differences in student performance. We present time series evidence for a number of European countries which suggests that rising educational expenditures obviously did not improve student performance....

New evidence confirms the conclusion of former surveys that the link between school resources and student performance is generally missing in educational production. While the conventional within-country cross-section evidence remains controversial, recent contributions which control for...

Most studies find little to no effect of classroom computers on student achievement. We suggest that this null effect may combine positive effects of computer uses without equivalently effective alternative traditional teaching practices and negative effects of uses that substitute more...

Most studies find little to no effect of classroom computers on student achievement. We suggest that this null effect may combine positive effects of computer uses without equivalently effective alternative traditional teaching practices and negative effects of uses that substitute more...