Identification and estimation of the effects of school quality on achievement of italian students

The aim of this dissertation is to assess the causal effect of school quality on students' acquisition of skills during the academic year. I exploit information at individual and school level obtained by integrating the data from the second wave of the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA 2003) with the administrative data on schools from the archive Sistema Integrato Segreterie Scolastiche Italiane (SISSI). The rich dataset allows to overcome the issue of non-random selection of students into schools of different quality. A general statistical procedure is used to allow for latent 'outcome' and 'treatment' variables –variation of skills and quality, respectively. The results confirm the main findings of literature, i.e. school quality, as measured by the usual observable characteristics of schools – like class size, does not matter once we control for individual endowment, family background and peer characteristics. Nevertheless, I provide evidence that schools have multiple dimensions of quality and there is some indication of an impact arising from teachers, whose effectiveness in promoting education seem to be explained by their type of job contract in terms of tenure.