Discrimination or explained differences? Individual and school-level effects explaining the minority achievement gap

ABSTRACT

This study is motivated by the distinctive outcome of the minority achievement gap in Estonia and Latvia, countries with similar legacies and socio-economic development. We have four sub-groups of schools involving pairs of instructing languages: Estonian and Russian in Estonia, and Latvian and Russian in Latvia. All four are above average performers according to international comparisons. Still, our data show that a remarkable achievement gap between majority and minority students exists only in Estonia. We employ the Oaxaca–Blinder twofold decomposition technique to explore the factors behind the minority achievement gap (MAG). We are able to explain almost half of the gap in Estonia by peer effects and the larger concentration of immigrants in minority schools. In Latvia, on the contrary, the average peer effect is positive in minority schools. Still, regarding the essence of the unexplained gap, our results remain inconclusive.

KEYWORDS:

• Explained and unexplained differences in educational outcome
• minority achievement gap
• bilingual school system
• Estonia
• Latvia
• PISA data

Acknowledgments

We thank discussants from the ECPR General Conference Panel of Education Governance Feedback Effects, and Policy Outcomes and Integration in Oslo in 2017 and the participants of EDEN scientific workshop in Budapest in 2017 for their feedback and constructive criticism. Most of all, we would like to thank the two anonymous referees from the Journal of Baltic Studies.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. We report the missing observations in Online Appendix 1, and explain the need and methods for the imputation. For imputation we assumed missing data occurred at random, however, imputations allow us to take care that missing values do not render any bias to our estimates.

2. PISA index CULTPOSS covers 5 items: classic literature; books of poetry; works of art; books on art, music and design; musical instruments.

3. Measured by the PISA variable belong.

4. Measured by the PISA variable best.

5. School head assessment of a claim: Achievement data provided to parents (yes/no).

6. Measured by the PISA variable testoften.

7. Measured by the PISA variable residence.

8. Measured by the PISA variable SCHAUT.

9. Measured by the PISA variable acpublic.

10. Measured by the PISA variable actrack.

11. Measured by the PISA variable discilisci.

12. Reimers (1983) uses average coefficients, Cotton (1988) suggests to weigh the coefficients by the group sizes, while Jann (2008) promotes pooled approach with group indicator (see Appendix 3 for the sensitivity analysis).

Additional information

Funding

This article has received funding from the Estonian Research Council (Eesti Teadusagentuur) PUTJD953 ”The policies, politics and distributional effects of education: the routes and challenges of Baltic skill regimes in the European context: EduPolB3.”

Notes on contributors

Triin Lauri

Triin Lauri is a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Konstanz and an associate professor in the School of Law, Governance, and Society at Tallinn University. Lauri’s research is focused on comparative social policy with a particular interest in education policy and social investment policies. See further details on Triin’s involvement in projects and list of publications here: https://www.etis.ee/CV/Triin_Lauri/eng?lang=ENG

Kaire Põder

Kaire Põder is a professor at the Methods Lab, a research unit at the Estonian Business School. Põder has taught courses in Game Theory, Microeconomics, Mechanism design, and Institutional Economics. Põder has been working as a principal investigator and as the project head in education and matching design related projects. Her research interests are aligned around institutional and policy designs in general, and efficiency and equity policy designs in education in particular. See Põder’s profile here: https://www.etis.ee/CV/Kaire_P%C3%B5der/est?lang=ENG

Nikolai Kunitsõn

Nikolai Kunitsõn is a lecturer of political science and a PhD student in State and Governance at Tallinn University. His main research focus is on the topics of integration, citizenship, education system, democracy, and qualitative interactive research methods. Kunitsõn has published about diaspora policy-making, citizenship education, relational analysis on labor markets etc. List of publications: https://www.etis.ee/CV/Nikolai_Kunitson/est?tabId=CV_ENG