Log-linear models for contingency tables are a key tool for the study of categorical inequalities in sociology. However, the conventional approach to model selection and specification suffers from at least two limitations: reliance on oftentimes equivocal diagnostics yielded by fit statistics, and the inability to identify patterns of association…

Latin American educational policy has relied on the assumption that better preparation can help school leaders improve their professional performance, thus improving quality of schools. Training programs for present or future school leaders have proliferated in the region, often publicly financed, but without enough evidence of their impact. Using…

This research reveals the importance that government funding and the quality of faculty have on the doctoral training of universities from the Council of Chilean Universities (CRUCH), thus exploring the existing relationship inside this formative process. The results and conclusions show that government funding has a direct impact on doctoral…

Resilience refers to the capacity of individuals to prosper despite encountering adverse circumstances. This paper defines academic resilience as the ability of 15-year-old students from disadvantaged backgrounds to perform at a certain level in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) in reading, mathematics and science that…

This study seeks to explain macrolevel drivers of adolescent fertility rate using a panel data set derived from 17 Latin American countries over a period of 16 years (1997-2012). While many studies of adolescent fertility have focused on individual-level explanations, this study explores whether adolescent fertility rate is correlated to…

To better understand the status of the teaching profession, we present a conceptual framework outlining the 4 domains of knowledge-worker professionals: professional benchmarks, professional discretion, room for promotion, and workplace conditions and use the TALIS 2013 survey data to show that these domains exist globally and vary within…

Although teacher quality is usually signalled to be the most relevant school-level factor impacting students' learning, little is known about the relevance of teacher effects explaining educational inequality. By using a value-added model for a cohort of 10th graders, in this work we examine the socioeconomic gap in teacher effects across Chilean…

This paper explores parental involvement using principal and parent survey reports to examine whether parents' involvement in their children's schools predicts academic achievement. Survey data from principals and parents of seven countries from the PISA 2012 database and hierarchical linear modelling were used to analyse between- and within-…

Ample evidence indicates that a person's human capital is important for success on the labor market in terms of both wages and employment prospects. However, unlike the efforts to identify the impact of school attainment on labor-market outcomes, the literature on returns to cognitive skills has not yet provided convincing evidence that the…

Despite consensus that school absenteeism has negative consequences for children's life outcomes, until recently, little was known about the prevalence of absenteeism or its potential to moderate the impacts of school-based interventions. This study provides evidence from a randomized experiment of a preschool intervention involving 1,876 children…

International studies show that the impact of socioeconomic status (SES) on learning has increased in a number of countries and that poverty is a risk factor that puts children's academic performance at risk. However, there are students who, despite living in impoverished conditions, achieve solid academic performance. How they do so is a question…

Using both quantitative and qualitative analyses, we examine the role of a college access intervention in the enrollment and persistence outcomes of low-income students in Chile modeled partially after a Texas admissions program. We find that, although students from the program have a mean cumulative GPA significantly lower than that of their…

Findings from this study show that educational and mobility opportunities for families and students participating in the Chilean voucher system are not homogenously distributed. Some families and students use and benefit from the system, while others will remain marginalized. The quantitative results in this study demonstrate that students of…