Assessing the efficiency of secondary schools in Chile: a data envelopment analysis
| Pages | 306-328 |
| Date | 04 July 2016 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/QAE-05-2015-0022 |
| Published date | 04 July 2016 |
| Author | David Andres Munoz,Juan Pablo Queupil |
| Subject Matter | Education,Curriculum, instruction & assessment,Educational evaluation/assessment |
Assessing the efciency of
secondary schools in Chile:
a data envelopment analysis
David Andres Munoz
Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering,
The Pennsylvania State University, University Park,
Pennsylvania, USA, and
Juan Pablo Queupil
Department of Educational Leadership, College of Education,
The Pennsylvania State University, University Park,
Pennsylvania, USA
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper was to evaluate the efciency of secondary education schools in
Chile. Since the early 1980s, several educational reforms have been passed with the main objective of
improving the quality, equity and efciency of the Chilean education system. This has initiated a debate
about the efcient use of public educational resources. In response, this study provides insights into
identifying the most efcient types of schools based on a set of different inputs and outputs.
Design/methodology/approach – This quantitative research study used data envelopment
analysis (DEA), which estimates a single index of efciency to identify schools performing at superior
levels compared to other schools with similar characteristics. Two sets of models are created for
evaluating efciency. The rst set of analyses provides a longitudinal efciency comparison based on
student performance on two national standardized tests as outputs, and the second model incorporates
socioeconomic characteristics of students attending different schools as inputs in the efciency
estimation.
Findings – Based on the longitudinal models, it was found that private schools are more efcient and
more consistent in maintaining their efciency over time than other types of schools. In addition, when
accounting for socioeconomic factors, publicly subsidized schools were more efcient than public
schools.
Practical implications – The Chilean parliament is currently discussing new educational reforms
that focus on more efcient use of educational resources to improve educational quality and equity. The
results provided in this study generate useful evidence for policymakers and other stakeholders
regarding school efciency and the appropriate allocation of public resources to support diverse
students served by different types of secondary educational institutions.
Social implications – Education is a key factor affecting social mobility and socioeconomic
improvement of societies. Schools are called upon to improve their performance to promote these social
goals. Accordingly, more novel forms of research on efciency are necessary to assess how well schools
are transforming their inputs into performance outputs.
Originality/value – This study provides a longitudinal analysis of educational efciency using DEA
with a national data set of Chilean schools to evaluate how consistent the schools are in maintaining
their levels of efciency over time. In addition, one DEA model accounts for a social “vulnerability”
index at the student level to better understand how efciently secondary schools use their resources.
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
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QAE
24,3
306
Received 25 May 2015
Revised 26 August 2015
11 December 2015
29 March 2016
Accepted 21 April 2016
QualityAssurance in Education
Vol.24 No. 3, 2016
pp.306-328
©Emerald Group Publishing Limited
0968-4883
DOI 10.1108/QAE-05-2015-0022
The insights gained provide data-driven answers to support more informed educational
decision-making and policy processes in Chile.
Keywords Secondary education, Efciency, Chile, Longitudinal analysis,
Data envelopment analysis
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
Education is a key element in the development of the nations and plays an important role
in human capital development (Garrett, 2010). Moreover, education is also seen by many
as a driver of social mobility with the potential to help improve the socioeconomic status
(SES) of different social groups (Brown et al., 2013). Efciency deals with maximizing
performance outcomes of entities like schools while using a minimum amount of
resources (Weihrich and Koontz, 2005). Differences in the performance and efciency of
different educational institutions, among other complex issues, could affect the scope
and extent to which education systems impact the progress of societies positively.
Understanding the variables that affect school outcomes and efciency is therefore
needed to motivate better use of educational resources in schools (Johnes, 2006).
A considerable number of studies have tried to determine what makes one school
perform better than others under similar conditions. The answer to this question could
depend on several factors. Typically, standardized educational test scores from national
or international assessments are used as the outcome measures to compare the
performance and efciency of different educational institutions. Studies of school
efciency are necessary for guiding educational policies at different management levels,
including internal school administration and government levels of policy making.
Further, educational policy makers, teachers, parents, the media and other
stakeholders discuss and judge the performance of different types of schools constantly
within their respective systems (Anderson et al., 1998). The public practice of making
inter-school comparisons has led to “quasi-market” conditions in which schools
performing at higher levels are seen as the benchmarks for the other schools to attain. To
develop best practices in this area, there is a need to improve methods for the
identication of schools that show higher relative efciency compared to peers.
Currently, there is widespread debate about more efcient use of public resources to
support a better educational system in Chile. In response, the Chilean Parliament has
proposed a series of educational reforms with a strong emphasis on quality and equity
of education, focusing particularly on primary and secondary education (Chilean
Ministry of Education, MINEDUC, 2014). These reforms hold the promise of providing
a better educational system and also leading to more informed use of public educational
resources. Given this scenario, more and novel forms of research are necessary to assess
how efciently schools are transforming their inputs into performance outputs.
The notion of efciency and its application in education has been widely discussed,
especially in economics (Bliss et al., 1991;Grosskopf et al., 2014;Slee et al., 1998;Taylor,
2010). In the past few decades, the evaluation of efciency and productivity in education
has attracted the attention of several researchers and practitioners. One of the main
emerging techniques used for this purpose is data envelopment analysis (DEA).
Although the DEA approach has been widely adopted for educational evaluations in
developed countries (Alexander et al., 2010;Bessent and Bessent, 1993), only a few such
studies have been conducted in developing countries, particularly in Latin America.
307
Efciency of
secondary
schools
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