The Difference That One Year of Schooling Makes for Russian Schoolchildren

Abstract

The PISA 2009 data (in reading) investigated the effectiveness of one year of schooling in seven countries: Russia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia, Germany, Canada, and Brazil. We used an instrumental variable, which allowed us to estimate the effect of one year of schooling through the fuzzy method of regression discontinuity. The analysis was performed both for regular and vocational education programs collectively as well as individually for regular schools. It was found that in general for Russian students enrolled in all programs, the effectiveness of one year of schooling is insignificant. In countries that practice the early separation of students into regular and vocational programs, the effectiveness of schooling is lower than in countries where all fifteen-year-olds are enrolled in regular programs. The effectiveness of one year of schooling for students enrolled in regular educational programs is significant in all countries. Students enrolled in vocational programs typically perform more poorly than those enrolled in regular programs. The strength of the relationship between the socioeconomic status of the student's family and the effectiveness of schooling are highly dependent on the education system and vary from country to country. For Russia, as well as for some other countries, the effectiveness of schooling does not depend on socioeconomic status. The significance of these results for the evaluation of the effectiveness of schooling, and in particular for the fair evaluation of national achievement in countries that offer different educational trajectories, is discussed.

Notes

English translation © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC, from the Russian text © 2013 “Voprosy obrazovaniia.” “Chto daet god obucheniia rossiiskomu shkol'niku: na materialakh PISA-2009: gramotnost’ chteniia,” Voprosy obrazovaniia, 2013, no. 1, pp. 107–35.Yulia Tyumeneva is Associate Professor and Senior Research Fellow in Institute of Education, National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow. Julia Kuzmina is Research Fellow in the International Laboratory of Education Policy Research, Institute of Education, National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow.Translated by Kenneth Cargill.

^1. The study was carried out in 2012 under the Basic Research Program at the National Research University–Higher School of Economics (HSE). We are grateful to Martin Carnoy, professor at Stanford University and director of the International Laboratory for Education Policy Analysis at the HSE, and Prashant Loyalka, professor at Stanford University and senior fellow of the International Laboratory for Education Policy Analysis at the HSE, for methodological assistance with the data analysis.

^2. Although fifteen-year-old students participated in the PISA study, the maximum age difference between the students in the sample may be up to one year (less one day). In all countries, the average age of 10th graders varies by a negligible margin, but by more than the average age of 9th graders.

^3. For brevity, we will call the effect of one year of schooling a “grade effect,” the established term in the English-language literature.

^4. TIMSS: “Trends in Mathematics and Science Study,” a comparative international monitoring study of the quality of mathematics and science education.

^5. The authors evaluated the effect of an additional year of schooling for these children in a way that was similar to what was done for fifteen-year-olds who remained in regular school after 9th grade. Due to the small size of the sample and the poor fit between the model and the data, these results are not shown. But, just as was true in the indirect calculation, the direct assessment of the effectiveness of schooling for children who left after the 9th grade to enroll in the vocational education system was negative.