Tamanho das turmas e desempenho em matemática no quinto ano do ensino fundamental das escolas de Salvador: tamanho importa?

Abstract

The discussion about important determinants of educational quality is quite extensive and controversial in economics of education literature, especially when discussing the impact of school resources. The class size is one of the central factors in this debate because is under direct control of public policies. The objective of this study is to investigate the impact of class size on learning in mathematics of students in the 5th grade of elementary school of public schools in the city of Salvador in 2011. For this, we use the method of instrumental variables to control for the endogeneity in the definition of class size. The results show that, controlling for other factors, there is an optimal size of the number of students in each class, and that beyond this number the performance impact becomes negative in municipal schools in the city of Salvador.