臺灣高中能力分校對教育不平等的影響

Are Schools the Great Equalizer in a Stratified School System? Evidence from Taiwan

趙振辰(Jen-Chen Chao)

指導教授 ： 蘇國賢

共同指導教授 ： 林國明(Kuo-Ming Lin)

國立臺灣大學/社會科學院/社會學研究所/碩士(2022年)

https://doi.org/10.6342/NTU202200532

摘要

學校究竟是縮小或是擴大來自不同家庭社經地位學生的學習成就差異？過去許多研究發現學校彌補了不同社經地位學生之間學習成就的落差，但大部分的研究多是奠基於美國的資料，少有研究分析其他社會脈絡下的學校效果。本論文探討臺灣高中對認知能力測驗分數的影響，以檢驗上述「學校作為等化器」的研究結論，能否適用於臺灣高中排名等級分明的制度環境。這篇論文考慮了兩個學校縮小或擴大不平等的潛在機制：（一）進入高品質學校之不均等的機會；以及（二）就讀高品質學校所帶來的異質性報酬。我使用臺灣長期教育追蹤資料庫的資料，檢驗就讀高中的學校品質，如何中介與調節家庭社經地位對學習成就的影響。藉由因果中介分析，我發現就讀較高品質的高中，對於高社經與低社經家庭出身的學生來說，對學習成就有幾乎相同的正面效益。然而，我也發現不同社經地位學生之間的學習成就落差，有大約四分之一是來自於就讀高中的學校品質差異。因此，研究發現顯示，臺灣高中入學制度所建立的校間分流機制，顯著地擴大了不同社經背景學生之間的學習成就差異。

關鍵字

學校效果 ； 教育不平等 ； 學校品質 ； 分流 ； 因果推論

並列摘要

Do schools reduce or increase socioeconomic inequality in academic achievement? Many studies suggest that schools play a compensatory role in socioeconomic achievement gaps, but few have identified school effects in contexts other than the United States. To investigate whether the “great equalizer” hypothesis holds in institutional contexts where schools are stratified, this paper studies school effects on test scores in Taiwanese high schools. The impacts of two potentially equalizing and disequalizing mechanisms are considered: (1) unequal access and (2) heterogeneous returns to higher-quality schools by family background. With data from the Tai-wan Education Panel Survey, I examine how school quality mediates and interacts with the effects of family socioeconomic status (SES) on academic achievement. Using a causal decomposition method, I find that attending higher-quality high schools is equally beneficial for both higher- and lower-SES students. However, about a quarter of the SES achievement gap upon graduation from high school can be explained by SES disparities in the quality of high schools attended. The findings suggest, therefore, that the between-school sorting mechanism governed by the admissions criteria plays a significant role in widening SES achievement gaps in this stratified school system.

並列關鍵字

school effects ； educational inequality ； school quality ； tracking ； causal inference

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