Comments for

1
Comments for When schools are the ones that
choose the effect of screening in Chile by
Dante Contreras, Sebastián Bustos and Paulina
Sepúlveda

• Discussant Emiliana Vegas
• The World Bank
• June 7, 2007

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Relevance timeliness of topic

• Key issue in the education debate in Chile is the
  inequity in the system resulting from school
  selection
• Government just introduced a (controversial) law
  proposal that would eliminate selection in all
  publicly financed schools through grade 8

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Findings

• Contreras et al. find that when controlling for
  school selection, the private school advantage
  disappears
• Interesting result that supports the hypothesis
  that the private school advantage relies on their
  ability to cream-skim students

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But

• Previous studies that have documented the private
  school advantage in Chile are inconclusive due to
  the inherent inability to attribute causality
  using cross-sectional data
• Contreras et al. has the same identification
  problem

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Suggestions

• Take advantage of likely implementation of new
  law that will forbid student selection in some
  schools to identify whether a private school
  advantage remains using longitudinal data