The influence of school-related factors on educational outcomes in Brazil [electronic resource]

Across three papers, I examine the influence of school-related factors on student outcomes in Brazil. In the first and second papers, I investigate the effects of teachers' contractual ties with the school on different outcomes. Two aspects of contractual ties were considered: 1) whether teachers hold a permanent or temporary contract, and 2) whether they work at a single or multiple schools during the week. In Brazil, a large proportion of teachers work on temporary contracts and at multiple schools. However, little is known about the educational implications of these contractual arrangements. My dissertation work aims to address this gap. The first paper makes causal inferences about the impact of permanent and single-school teachers on teacher-student relationships and student performance. Analyses use unique administrative and test data from Sao Paulo, Brazil. To account for nonrandom sorting of students and teachers across schools and classrooms, I use a cross-subject analysis with student-fixed effects. Results show that single-school and permanent teachers have a positive and significant impact on teachers' provision of support and academic feedback. Permanent teachers also have a positive effect on student achievement. However, findings indicate that the effects of teachers' contractual ties are smaller for students at higher risk of school failure. The second paper builds on these findings and explores whether teachers' contractual ties affect school dropout. This study uses extensive data from Brazil's Census of Basic Education over four academic years (2011-2014) and employs two classes of fixed effects models based on school-grade-year variation. Results are mixed. School dropout rates are 0.5 to 1 percent lower when students are taught exclusively by single-school teachers; however, dropout rates are 0.4 to 0.8 percent higher when students are taught by permanent teachers. The third paper extends the research on socioeconomic achievement gaps by looking at the extent to which inequality in test scores explains attainment gaps in Brazil. This study draws on Boudon's (1974) theoretical model of inequality in educational opportunity to estimate the primary effects of social background on high school graduation: that is, the proportion of the overall inequality in high school completion associated with the socioeconomic test score gap between students from low and high social backgrounds. Analyses are based on administrative and test data from Sao Paulo and use a decomposition technique for non-linear probably models. Results indicate that the test score gap in middle school is associated with half of the overall socioeconomic inequality in high school graduation. These primary effects are similar to those estimated for the U.S. This is a contribution to previous studies of primary effects, which are based primarily on data from European countries and the United States.

Keywords: Education.
Advisor: Carnoy Martin primary advisor. Thesis advisor
Jackson Michelle Victoria primary advisor. Thesis advisor
Reardon Sean F. advisor. Thesis advisor