needed), and a strong “client power” relationship. Regarding this last relationship, there is evidence that EDUCO parents’ associations visit classrooms 4-5 times more often than what parents would do in traditional schools: this most certainly explains why teacher absences are lower. In Nicaragua, the tight association between school autonomy and parent participation is also likely to be an important element in explaining why school decisions on teacher management issues are positively related to educational quality: in particular, there is evidence that parents are quite effective in helping track and monitor teacher activity.

# **<u>Other cases</u>**

**Other evidence suggests that school autonomy in several areas increases test scores and other educational achievement indicators and that the impact of autonomy is strengthened by the use of “client power”. It is also shown that “client power” only has an impact combined with school autonomy. Finally, school autonomy, or increased school decision-making in local decisions,  can promote convergence among rich and poor schools and its impact is likely to depend on surrounding institutional characteristics.**

## **Evidence:**

The relation between autonomy and participation at the school level is also particularly looked at in a study of Eskeland and Filmer (2002) on Argentina, where, through the estimation of an expanded education production function where the impact of school autonomy and parent participation on test scores is captured through “de-facto” measures of autonomy and participation per school<sup>34</sup> , they find a composite index of school autonomy (including decisionmaking autonomy in the teacher management area) to be significantly and positively related to exam scores and the marginal impact of this index to be increasing with the level of participation. The study also finds that parent participation only works on test scores through autonomy and that the impact of autonomy (as well as the enhancing effect of participation) increases for poor and public sector schools. These results suggest that: (a) school autonomy, even if limited, is effective in promoting higher quality; (b) school autonomy effectiveness increases with the level of participation, or, the strength of the “client power” relationship; (c) this “client power” relationship only becomes effective when there is school autonomy, which; and (d) school autonomy can be useful in increasing the performance of poor schools (and promote convergence with richer schools).

The complementarity between school autonomy and parent participation, and the need for more specific analysis of other determinants of the impact of school autonomy on educational performance, is illustrated in a recent study of Paes de Barros and Mendonca (1998) on Brazil. This study, using an education production function analysis which exploits the variation in space and time of educational innovations to test the impact on test scores and other educational achievement indicators (such as school repetition, out-of-school-youth and age-for-grade distortion) of three measures of school autonomy (financial autonomy, election of principals and the adoption of school councils)<sup>35</sup> , finds a generally positive and substantial impact of the three innovations on school repetition. It also finds, however, that, even if still significant, the three

> 34 The study, which covers 20,000 students drawn from a representative sample of private and public Argentinian schools, also attempts to address the issue of the potential endogeneity of autonomy and participation.

> 35 The model, run on the 18 states between 1981 and 1993,  takes particular care to control for variables like the quality of family environment and teachers which could be correlate with the innovative States.

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