Disparities between Arabs and Jews in school resources and student achievement in Israel

V. Lavy

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

13 Scopus citations

Abstract

The large differentials in schooling outcomes and cognitive achievements of students in the Jewish and Arab educational systems of Israel have been documented in the past. More recent evidence from the 1991 and 1992 nationwide achievement tests, administered to grades three to five in arithmetic and reading comprehension, suggests that the gap between Jewish and Arab students is still very wide. However, similar differentials are evident in the total resources allocated to the two education systems in 1990. For example, the total economic resources per student in the Jewish system amounted to 1,400 NIS (new Israeli shekels), whereas in the Arab sector total resources per student were only 540 NIS. The objective of this article is to evaluate the extent to which the disparities in schooling outcomes between the Arab and Jewish education systems can be accounted for by the relative deprivation of economic and educational resources in the Arab sector. Since relatively more resources were recently allocated to the Arab sector, I also examine the likely impact of this change on student achievement in the Arab sector. The empirical approach of this article is to estimate the determinants of cognitive skills in primary schools in the Arab and Jewish systems. I present estimates of the causal effect of resources on schooling outcomes and use these estimates to evaluate which community- and school-level factors are most effective in promoting achievement in schools in Israel. I also suggest orders of magnitude for the change in resources needed to eliminate the performance gap between Arab and Jewish students.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)175-191
Number of pages17
JournalEconomic Development and Cultural Change
Volume47
Issue number1
StatePublished - 1998

Keywords

  • Educational attainment
  • Israel
  • Racial disparity

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