The Role of Public-Subsidized Private Schools in Colombia: How Do They Work, in What Contexts, and Who Benefits from Them?

Despite the increase of public funding for private education on a global scale, empirical evaluation of these initiatives has been sparse. These few studies have provided inconclusive results on the effectiveness, quality, and inequality of public-subsidized private schools (PSPS). Yet, little work has addressed the question of why and how this type of schooling succeeds or fails in different contexts. My paper argues that the idea that students in PSPS achieve more than students in public schools may not hold true when implemented in real contexts. In developing economies, this type of private provision can be affected by principal-agent problems: governments may lack capacity to choose or control subsidized schools, and private schools can be scarce or lack capabilities and/or incentives to provide sufficient and good service. In turn, these problems create opportunities for actors in the government, private schools, or families to re-interpret the ideas underlying publicly subsidized private schools and take advantage from the policy for their own benefit and at expense of an even distribution of resources.

This study employs a within comparison of Colombia, a country with a long-standing but understudied tradition of publicly subsidized private schools. Since education delivery in this country is a responsibility of provinces, this paper compares PSPS in the subnational jurisdictions with the highest and the lowest proportion of enrolled students in private subsidized institutions. I use statistical matching techniques to assess the results of publicly subsidized private education at the national level, and to select cases (schools) in the two jurisdictions for the qualitative comparative analysis of the implementation process. With this methodological strategy, this study unravels the relationship between the social and political contexts in which PSPS are employed, the actual way in which these schools operate, and the results associated with these contexts and types of operation.