Efficiency in Mexican elementary schools: A regional comparative

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is twofold: To measure school technical efficiency and to identify the determinants of elementary school performance among Mexican states. Our panel data consist of 48,645 public elementary schools observed annually from 2009 to 2011, a period where subnational states administered most of the educational expenditure. We propose a two-stage analysis. In the first stage, the stochastic frontier analysis is used to calculate elementary schools' technical efficiency. In the second stage, efficiency is regressed on school characteristics and environmental variables using panel data analysis while capturing state heterogeneity. We find that primary schools have important inputs under their control that affects educational outcomes. The principal's non-teaching load, infrastructure, teaching experience, and expenditure per student all have a positive and significant effect on efficiency. As for state-level characteristics, we find that states' primary school spending is not necessarily positively linked to efficiency. Finally, we observe that fragmentation and regionalization of teachers' unions negatively affect efficiency in elementary public education.