School cover policy and academic achievement the case of medelin´s concession program

Abstract

RESUMEN: En años recientes la Alcaldía de Medellín lanzó un programa de cobertura escolar para jóvenes por fuera del sistema educativo público. El programa, conocido como Colegios en Concesión, fue diseñado para proveer educación pública con administración privada en lugares donde la oferta de cupos escolares era reducida. En esta investigación indagamos por el impacto del programa sobre el logro académico de los estudiantes. Metodológicamente nos inclinamos por la metodología de pareo o matching. A pesar de la buena reputación de los colegios en concesión nosotros encontramos evidencia de que sus estudiantes tuvieron un desempeño inferior que sus pares en colegios administrados por medios públicos.

ABSTRACT: In recent years the secretary of Education of Medellín started the Concession Schools Program for school-age children who were not covered by the educational public system. This program was designed to provide private educational management by means of public resources where public supply was reduced. In this work we are interested in investigating the impact of this program on students’ academic achievement. To this aim we match individual at concession schools with those at public ones by computing the probability of attending concession institutions. In spite of the good reputation of the concession strategy we found that students at concession schools had a lower performance than their peers at public schools.