Abstract:

An abundance of literature examines the impacts of school choice and private schooling on the academic abilities of children; however, not much has been done to determine the effects of private schooling on non-cognitive skills. To our knowledge, this is the first study to estimate the causal impact of private schooling on non-cognitive skills as measured by effort on tests and answering patterns on long student questionnaires. In theory, private schools facing competitive pressures are incentivized to provide a higher quality educational service. If non-cognitive skills such as effort, diligence, and respect are included in families’ perceptions of quality, we may expect that private schools could have a positive impact on related measures.

On the other hand, if individual families do not value the skills that are being captured by test and survey effort measures, we would expect to find negative effects. If a certain skill has very little benefits accrued to the individual family unit and large benefits accrued to others in society, we would also expect to find negative effects. This is so as skills with large positive externalities may be under consumed if voluntarily selected by self-interested families (Pigou, 1932). Correspondingly, traditional public schools around the world were adopted in order to subsidize skills with theoretically large positive externalities such as respect and deference to authority (Gatto, 2002; Fichte, 1993; Mann, 1855). Prussia first implemented the modern compulsory education system in 1763 and strengthened its focus on social cohesion in the early 19th century after its defeat in the Napoleonic Wars. This system quickly spread throughout the rest of the world and was adopted in Massachusetts in 1852 (Tyack, 1974). Since the world’s modern system of public schooling has historically placed much weight on social cohesion, it is possible that they are more effective in shaping the non-cognitive skills that primarily benefit others in society.

Importantly, our study examines the effects of private schooling on non-cognitive skills that largely benefit individual students (i.e. effort on PISA tests) and others in society (i.e. diligence and agreeableness; effort on PISA student surveys). Of course, performance on PISA tests and long PISA surveys do not have any bearing on the long-run outcomes of the students. However, students are more likely to perceive that the PISA exam has some type of effect on their later life outcomes, especially since students are conditioned to perform well on various academic tests throughout the rest of their K-12 educational experience. For at least thirteen years, children learn that performing well on academic exams translates to grades that impact their grade point average, college admissions, and lifetime earnings. Since students are less likely to make that connection with a long survey, performing well on the PISA survey requires a larger degree of respect of authority figures. Further, students are not even aware that their effort on long surveys can be evaluated by metrics such as non-response and carelessness. We take advantage of a natural experimental setting around the world to test our hypothesis that access to private schooling improves non-cognitive skills that benefit individuals and decreases social skills that benefit third parties.

Keywords:

Private school, school choice, vouchers, international education, non-cognitive skills, test effort, PISA.