Tuition, family background and proficiency results

Abstract

This paper utilizes for the first time in the literature the microdata from Enem to examine the school effect on the proficiency of high school students of the 1,000 best schools in the São Paulo State. The aim of the paper is to examine if the control by socioeconomic characteristics significantly alters the official school rankings. The results show that it does not, although it significantly decreases the magnitude of the school effect. Further, we show that about 24% of the school effect can be explained by the peer effect. Finally, the elasticity of the proficiency with respect to the school cost is 0,11, that is, a 10% rise in the school cost increases the students’ performance by about 1,1%, even after controlling for the family background and peer effect.