Preparing students for the real challenges in life is one of the most important goalsin education. Constructivism is an approach that uses real-life experiences toconstruct knowledge. Problem-Based Learning (PBL), for almost five decadesnow, has been the most innovative constructivist pedagogy...

This study addresses the phenomenon of permanence for long years of low performance (urban) schools, measured by SIMCE. We also analyze mobility of students to other schools of same or better quality. The results show that student's mobility rates in these schools is almost 11%. Almost 30% of...

Do increased instruction hours improve the performance of all students? Using PISA scores of students in ninth grade, we analyse the effect of a German education reform that increased weekly instruction hours by two hours (6.5 percent) overalmost five years. In the additional time, students are...

This paper provides evidence of the effect of age at school entry on college admission and earnings. It does so by exploiting a number of features in the application process to one of the major flagship universities in Brazil. By comparing applicants with different ages at school entry depending...