A Hierarchical Dynamic Beta Regression Model of School Performance in the Brazilian Mathematical Olympiads for Public Schools

TL;DR

This paper introduces a hierarchical dynamic beta regression model to analyze the performance of Brazilian public schools in the OBMEP from 2006 to 2013, accounting for covariates and temporal evolution.

Contribution

It develops a novel hierarchical dynamic beta regression approach to model school performance over time with covariates, capturing evolving effects and hierarchical structure.

Findings

Federal schools outperform municipal and state schools.

School performance increases with municipal HDI.

Higher proportion of boys correlates with better performance in higher levels.

Abstract

The Brazilian Mathematical Olympiads for Public Schools (OBMEP) is held every year since 2005. In the 2013 edition there were over 47,000 schools registered involving nearly 19.2 million students. The Brazilian public educational system is structured into three administrative levels: federal, state and municipal. Students participating in the OBMEP come from three educational levels, two in primary and one in secondary school. We aim at studying the performance of Brazilian public schools which have been taking part of the OBMEP from 2006 until 2013. We propose a standardization of the mean scores of schools per year and educational level which is modeled through a hierarchical dynamic beta regression model. Both the mean and precision of the beta distribution are modeled as a function of covariates whose effects evolve smoothly with time. Results show that, regardless of the educational level, federal schools have better performance than municipal or state schools. The mean performance of schools increases with the human development index (HDI) of the municipality the school is located in. Moreover, the difference in mean performance between federal and state or municipal schools tends to increase with the HDI. Schools with higher proportion of boys tend to have better mean performance in the second and third educational levels of OBMEP.