EDUCATIONAL OUTCOMES IN OECD COUNTRIES
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endogenous-growth or neoclassical terms, improved educational achievement is
projected to have a large impact on future economic well-being of OECD countries.
Yet simply knowing that skill differences are important does not provide a guide to
policies that might promote more skills. Indeed, a wide variety of policies have been
implemented within various countries without much evidence of success in either
achievement or economic terms. We believe that the disappointing results of the past
generally reflect pursuing policies for which there is little empirical support.
Substantial research has gone into understanding why achievement differs across
students and across countries. While controversies have existed about the interpretation
of various individual pieces of evidence, considerable agreement now exists about what
kinds of approaches are unreliable avenues for change. There is perhaps less agreement
on the precise approaches that might be followed, but even here there is a growing
consensus about the general sets of policies that have shown promise based on more
credible research approaches.
The work on achievement determinants generally falls under the heading “education
production functions.” The extensive work has taken a variety of perspectives and
approaches. The general objective is to sort out the causal impacts of school factors
(things that can potentially be manipulated through policy) from other influences on
achievement including family background, peers, neighborhood influences, and the like
(which are less readily amenable to policy change). In this section, we discuss available
evidence on the potential for different aspects of school policy - in particular, those
focused on school resource, teacher quality, and institutional structures -to improve
educational achievement significantly.
6.1. Evidence on school resources
The most extensive generally available evidence relates to the effects of resources.
Many policies undertaken involve substantial flows of resources - direct spending,
changes in teacher salaries, reductions in class size, and the like - made within the
context of current school organization. The empirical evidence clearly documents the
difficulties with such policies. Simply providing more resources gives, according to the
available evidence, little assurance that student performance will improve significantly.
The underlying analyses of resources include studies within individual countries and
across different countries and have been extensively reviewed elsewhere (see Hanushek
(2003); Woessmann (2007a); Hanushek and Woessmann (2010)).
The easiest way to see the situation is a simple cross-country picture. Figure 7 plots
the descriptive association between educational expenditure per student and educational
outcomes for recent OECD achievement tests, the PISA 2006 study. Ignoring Mexico
and Turkey where cumulative expenditure per student (over the age range of 6 to 15