Replication data for: The High Returns to Private Schooling in a Low-Income Country

Existing studies from the United States, Latin America, and Asia provide scant evidence that private schools dramatically improve academic performance relative to public schools. Using data from Kenya—a poor country with weak public institutions—we find a large effect of private schooling on test scores, equivalent to one full standard deviation. This finding is robust to endogenous sorting of more able pupils into private schools. The magnitude of the effect dwarfs the impact of any rigorously tested intervention to raise performance within public schools. Furthermore, nearly two-thirds of private schools operate at lower cost than the median government school.

现有来自美国、拉丁美洲及亚洲的相关研究，均未提供充分证据表明，私立学校相较于公立学校可显著提升学生学业表现。本研究依托肯尼亚——一个公共机构建设薄弱的贫穷国家——的调研数据，发现私立教育对考试成绩存在显著正向效应，效应大小等同于整整一个标准差。该结论在能力更强的学生自主选择私立学校所引发的内生性排序问题下依然稳健。此效应的幅度远超所有已在公立学校场景中经过严格检验的绩效提升干预手段的影响。此外，近三分之二的私立学校办学成本低于中位数水平的公立学校。