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Mind the gap: Measuring academic underachievement using stochastic frontier analysis
journal contribution
posted on 2022-01-13, 14:52 authored by Deni Mazrekaj, Kristof De Witte, Thomas TriebsThomas TriebsWe propose using Stochastic Frontier Analysis to estimate pupils’ academic underachievement. We model underachievement as the gap between expected achievement and actual achievement, not due to a learning disability. Our data are a panel for 2,228 Belgian pupils observed over 6 years of primary education. We found that the average underachievement gap is 23.5%. That is, the average pupil does not exploit about one fourth of their potential. Gifted pupils appear to underachieve as much as non-gifted pupils. We also found that class size is a determinant of underachievement. The association between class size and underachievement is non-monotonic, with an underachievement minimum at a class size of about 20 pupils.
Funding
Research Foundation Flanders (FWO) as Aspirant [grant numbers 1172519N and V439919N]
History
School
- Business and Economics
Department
- Economics
Published in
Exceptional ChildrenVolume
88Issue
4Pages
442 - 459Publisher
SAGE PublicationsVersion
- VoR (Version of Record)
Rights holder
© the AuthorsPublisher statement
This is an Open Access Article. It is published by SAGE Publications under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence (CC BY 4.0). Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Acceptance date
2021-11-02Publication date
2022-02-02Copyright date
2022ISSN
0014-4029eISSN
2163-5560Publisher version
Language
- en
Depositor
Dr Thomas Triebs. Deposit date: 12 January 2022Usage metrics
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