Do poor students benefit from China's Merger Program? Transfer path and educational performance
Do poor students benefit from China's Merger Program? Transfer path and educational performance
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DOI：
10.1080/02188791.2013.790781
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发表时间：
2013-08
影响因子：
1.7
通讯作者：
Xinxin Chen;Hongmei Yi;Linxiu Zhang;Di Mo;James Chu;S. Rozelle
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Xinxin Chen;Hongmei Yi;Linxiu Zhang;Di Mo;James Chu;S. Rozelle
为了提供更好的教育设施，提高农村贫困学生的教育水平，中国政府从20世纪90年代末开始将偏远的农村小学合并为集中的村、镇或县学校。为了配合这项政策，已经建造了寄宿设施，允许(强制)小学适龄儿童住在学校而不是家里。更广泛地说，也在努力改善农村学校，特别是县和乡镇的学校。不幸的是，很少有实证研究可以评估新的合并和投资计划对学生教育表现的影响。根据一个独特的数据集，记录了学生在小学阶段的学习路径(即学生就读的不同类型的学校)以及三个贫困县的数学考试成绩，我们使用描述性统计和多元分析(包括普通最小二乘(OLS)和协变量匹配)来分析不同迁移路径与学生学习成绩的关系。这使我们能够研究学校合并和投资计划的成本和收益。分析结果表明，在县级学校就读的学生整体表现要好于那些在乡村或乡镇学校就读的学生。然而，在城镇学校完成小学学业似乎对学生的学习成绩没有影响。令人惊讶的是，从一个教学点开始小学教育并没有伤害到农村学生；相反，在某些情况下，它会提高他们的考试成绩。最后，在寄宿效应方面，OLS的中性估计和协变量匹配结果中的负估计证实了寄宿对学生没有帮助，在某些情况下甚至可能降低他们的学习成绩。
Aiming to provide better education facilities and improve the educational attainment of poor rural students, China's government has been merging remote rural primary schools into centralized village, town, or county schools since the late 1990s. To accompany the policy, boarding facilities have been constructed that allow (mandate) primary school-aged children to live at school rather than at home. More generally, there also have been efforts to improve rural schools, especially those in counties and towns. Unfortunately, little empirical work has been available to evaluate the impact of the new merger and investment programmes on the educational performance of students. Drawing on a unique dataset that records both the path by which students navigate their primary school years (i.e., which different types of schools did students attend) as well as math test scores in three poverty-stricken counties, we use descriptive statistics and multivariate analysis (both Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) and covariate matching) to analyse the relationship between different transfer paths and student educational performance. This allows us to examine the costs and benefits of the school merger and investment programmes. The results of the analysis show that students who attend county schools perform systematically better than those who attend village or town schools. However, completing primary school in town schools seems to have no effect on students' academic performance. Surprisingly, starting primary education in a teaching point does not hurt rural students; on the contrary, it increases their test scores in some cases. Finally, in terms of the boarding effect, the neutral estimate in OLS and the negative estimate in covariate matching results confirm that boarding at school does not help the students; in some cases it may even reduce their academic performance.