Amanda Gant

Secondary school performance:

Case study of students from Cusmapa, Nicaragua
I. Introduction
College isnt for me; I dont have good grades in high school. Only the smart kids go to
college. These thoughts can come from students from around the world, from the US to
Nicaragua. Students are not the only ones who think that grade point averages (GPAs) are
important in order to go to college. Many states, countries and schools have GPA requirements
for receiving grants, scholarships and admission. Since GPAs are important for getting students
to college, then some energy should be spent to look at the relationship between different
variables and GPAs, with the goal of understanding what can affect GPAs. This paper examines
this relationship in the GPAs of high school students at the small, rural high school of Cusmapa,
in the developing country of Nicaragua.
The debates around education agree that that education helps the economic development
of a country. Professor Carl Dahlman attests that higher levels of education are necessary to use,
adapt, and create new knowledge; Education and training, therefore, are the key enablers of the
knowledge economy and key elements for increased competitiveness and improved welfare.1
Eric Hanusheck, who writes for the World Bank confirms that educational quality and cognitive
abilities are related with more equal income distribution and economic growth. Education is
relevant for the economic health of a country, and is relevant for the improvement of Nicaragua's
economy, as well. Investment in schools and teachers is an accepted route of arriving at
education; however, Bruce Fuller argues that there are varied educational outcomes for equal
levels of educational spending2. I hope to discover some variables that affect educational
outcomes that may be overlooked when focusing on school inputs.
1 Technology, globalization and growth presentation, 2/7/07
2 Fuller, What School Factors Raise Achievement in the Third World?

Amanda Gant
My thesis deals with Cusmapa, a small community in Nicaragua that may be

representative of many rural communities in Nicaragua3. I will look at the effects of out-ofschool variables such as daily attendance at supplemental secondary education programs, child
sponsorship, family size and distance from learning institution on a student's GPA, which is the
measure of the students academic performance or achievement4. I am testing the hypothesis that
student background characteristics effect academic achievement of a student. School input
variables are controlled for since I am studying students from one high school. In the case that
some variables are found to be correlated with GPAs, I want to examine the possibilities that
policies may be suggested to create conditions that are conducive to better learning results.
The rest of this paper will flow in the following way: First I will give a literature review
of economic papers that deal with monitoring academic performance, explaining that my paper
differs because it is a school-level study that specifically examines out-of-school variables'
relationship with variance of Grade Point Average (GPA). Then I will discuss the specifics of my
research, including details about Cusmapa and the survey that I administered there, and make the
case for secondary education in Cusmapa. Following that I will present the results and make
some conclusions, programming suggestions and suggestions for further research.
II. Literature Review: A framework for grouping variables
The human capital theory provides a popular method with which to organize independent
and control variables. The theory is that if one makes investments in education, then one should
see economic results; a function of monetary input determines educational achievement, and
therefore economic growth. In their paper entitled The Determinants of School Achievement in
Developing Countries: A Review of the Research Simmons and Alexander explain a main idea
3
4

See map in the Appendix

I will use GPAs as a measure of academic achievement and academic performance, and will use the words
achievement and performance interchangeably throughout this paper.

Amanda Gant
of the human capital debate, the Educational Production Function (EPF), which serves as a

central framework to economically study academic achievement in other literature, as well as in

my paper. The model is constructed as follows:
A = g[S, F, P, I]
A = academic achievement, S = school inputs, F = Family background characteristics, P = peer
group characteristics and I = initial endowments.
Simmons and Alexander's paper goes on to review 19 papers from developing countries
that study the influence of the four EPF variable groups - family background characteristics,
school inputs, peer group characteristics and initial endowments on variation in student
achievement. The Simmons and Alexander paper is good for gauging the results of the debates
and questions concerning results from education in developing countries. From the four groups
of variables in the EPF, I include proxies for three: family background characteristics - mother
and father's education level, marital status and number of siblings; school inputs - distance from
the high school, and daily attendance of Fabretto programs; and for initial endowments - gender
and year in high school.
Hanushek and Woessmann sum up the traditional approach by saying that the general
objective is to sort out the causal impacts of school factors (things that can potentially be
manipulated through policy) from other influences on achievement including family
background...5
The standard question about analyzing educational achievement has been that school inputs,
instead of non-school variables, retain their importance; school input variables are seen as the
main vehicle to improve school quality. However, Bruce Fuller states that if we do not define
relevant family background and social class variables within non-Western cultures then the
5 The role of education quality in economic growth, p. 59

Amanda Gant 4
extent that school input is having is over stated6. Bruce Fuller's work asks: Do schools raise
achievement after taking into account pupils' family background? implying that familial
background and social class variables are important and do have an effect on achievement. His
paper then goes on to classify the results of 60 econometric papers from developing countries
that explain the variance of students' performance with respect to different variables from their
various schools as compared to the variance in students' performance explained by students'
background. The aim of his paper is to determine the relative importance of background
characteristics and school characteristics.
In a paper entitled The Effect of Primary-School Quality on Academic Achievement
Across Twenty-nine High- and Low-Income Countries economists Heyneman and Loxely
tackle more thoroughly the debate about the relationship between in-school and out-of school
variables and the quality of education received. Out-of-school variables include are set to
include conditions that students inherit sex, intelligence, socioeconomic status...access to
libraries. In-school variables include textbooks, budget, hours of classes, etc. Like other
economic papers I encountered, their work investigates the effects of in-school variables on
academic achievement, and the use of in-school variables as a vehicle to improve school quality.
Literature often falls short by discounting the influence of student background
characteristics, and the ability to structure achievement-promoting policies in response to results
from those characteristics. As many reports examine educational performance with the goal of
determining what makes a school produce good results (usually in the form of improved
performance), my paper is unique because I will also take into consideration out of school
variables that may be related to good academic performance.
My study differs from both Fullers and Heynemans works in that it specifically hones in
6 Fuller

Amanda Gant 5
on the influence of student background on academic performance. All of the students I surveyed
come from the same school, thus controlling for all of the in-school variables. I therefore am
able to ask the question: Do pupils family backgrounds and other variables raise achievement,
after taking into account school inputs?
I believe that policy that can encourage educational achievement goes beyond changing
school funding and/or organization as much of a student's life occurs outside of school. As such,
the effects of other life situations on the variance of academic achievement should also be taken
into consideration. To this end I study student achievement data from one high school, thus
controlling for school effects, then to analyze the results within the context of the larger and
more international debate.
With respect to the variable academic achievement, one should choose the proxy while
keeping in mind the comparisons one wishes to make. I have chosen student GPAs to gauge
academic achievement, my dependent variable; however test scores are another popular ways to
gage academic achievement. If one is doing an international or nationwide test, one may decide
to look at the results of a standardized test that was given in each location studied in order to
have data based on equal measures; Woessmann chose the Third International Math and Science
Study 7 for his international study on school effectiveness. Heyneman and Loxely collected their
data from nationwide or international surveys performed by international or governmental
institutions such as the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement
or The Planning and Organizational Office of the Ministry of Education of El Salvador. These
data sources are representative of the majority of data that is used in the literature, however this
data tends to overlook the poorer urban and especially the rural areas where such tests are not
administered. On the other hand, if one is studying the academic performance of students from
7 The Determinants of School Achievement in Developing Countries: A Review of the Research , p. 347

Amanda Gant
within one school, as I have done with my research, then GPAs can form a strong proxy for

academic achievement. When I use GPA, I am comparing the relative performance of students,
and assume that within one school the grading scale will be fairly comparable throughout.
Alexander and Simmons stressed that many results from papers that they compared
actually contrasted, emphasizing the importance of localized studies of each educational system.
For example, larger school size was related with higher grades in Chile and India, and with lower
grades in Malaysia and the Congo. My work adds to the array of literature by providing
specialized insight into the high school of Cusmapa, Nicaragua. This insight is especially
differentiated because this is the first econometric paper based on data from Cusmapa.
III. The specific research
Cusmapa, Nicaragua is at the end of a dirt road in the mountains in Northern Nicaragua.
Located 7 hours from Managua and a two and a half hour school bus ride from the nearest
urban zone, where people buy necessities such as toiletries and simple processed foods,
Cusmapans are very self-sufficient, producing their own coffee, tropical fruits, beans, tomatoes,
cheese and tortillas. The economy is primarily agriculture mainly for subsistence and local
market sales. The hilly land makes many plots sub-optimal for growing crops.
There is one high school in Cusmapa, and this school is the location of my study. All the
students from Cusmapa that attend high school must attend here. For some students, it is a 3
minute walk to the school, other students walk over two hours to arrive at the school. The high
school served about 300 students in the 2006 academic year. In Cusmapa, there exist resources,
in the form of state-sponsored and NGO-sponsored scholarships, for motivated students to attend
college. As resources are available, success in the secondary school in Cusmapa will allow more
students to make plans for higher education.

Amanda Gant 7
Cusmapa is one of many small, rural communities that exist in Nicaragua. The results that
I find here may be transferable to other rural and poor communities. %42.7 of Nicaraguans live
in rural areas, %79.9 of Nicaraguan workers earn less than $2 a day, meaning that there is a lot of
rural poor8. Moreover, there are many young people in the country: 53% of Nicaragua's
population is under 18 years old9, meaning there are many students that rely on rural high
schools similar to the students and high school in Cusmapa. The results of this paper could have
implications not just for Cusmapa, but also for the many other small communities that exist in
Nicaragua.
My Data Sources and Empirical Strategy
I planned my survey in order to solicit data to represent variables that are important
variables likely to be correlated with student academic achievement. I designed a two-page
survey with 35 questions that would solicit the kinds of responses to use in my analysis. I gave
the survey to a pool of 227 students ages 11 to 21 over the course of two days. I worked with the
principal of the school to schedule times to visit each of the grades. As the students were in class,
I simply explained a little about the research project and asked them to fill out the survey and
turn it in to the front of the classroom. After collecting all of the surveys, I transferred their
responses to an excel spreadsheet from whence I have begun to analyze the data.
I put the questions that solicited these variables into six categories as to give structure to
the survey. The categories were: About me, school questions, work questions, questions about
their future plans and hopes, family background questions and questions about participation in
Fabretto programs10. The independent variable is academic achievement, which is denoted here
by average reported GPA, on a 0-100% scale. This number was highly recognized and easily
8 UNDP Human Development Report, 2005.
9 UNICEF, http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/nicaragua.html
1010 See appendix for English version of the survey.

Amanda Gant 8
reported by the students at the school. I chose my control variables from among factors that are
usually cited as effecting academic performance and which cannot really be changed by practice
or policy. In my research I investigate as control variables such as: gender, parental education
levels, parental literacy, and year in school. I chose test variables by imagining which variables
about a child's situation could be changed or influenced through policy or individual habit
changes. In my research I investigate as test variables: daily attendance at Fabretto, time walked
to the high school, number of siblings a child has and child sponsorship.
My null hypothesis is that there are variables that are correlated with higher academic
performance. Upon finding these significant variables from within my data set, I would hope to
see if some policy suggestions based on this locally-collected data might be offered for the
Cusmapa community.
Econometric Model
I use cross sectional data set with linear regression techniques, starting with my test
variables, and then adding key control variables as to explain more of the effect on GPAs. I have
two baseline regressions. The first regression is of test variables, which are variables that could
be affected through policies or programs. This regression is:
GPA=(distance)+ (sponsorship)+ (Fabretto attendance) + (siblings)
The second regression is what I call the traditional model, one that uses some of the many factors
that are popularly sited as having correlations with student achievement. This model is as
follows:
GPA= (number of siblings)+ (mom's years of school)+ (dad's years of school)+
(gender)
I then created a stronger regression by choosing control variables that produce the most

Amanda Gant 9
compelling explanatory power; paying special attention to rising adjusted R squared values and
statistical significance. For example, I substituted mother's and father's years of schooling with
mother's and father's literacy for the measure of parental educational level to see which one is
more substantially related with GPAs.
Returning to the literature, Heyneman and Loxely managed their data in a way that
served as a guide for me; they removed variables if they showed little variance or if their
coefficients were less than .05. This paper compared the performance of schools as compared
with other schools from the same country, using pupil performance to measure success. I am also
studying student performance and, therefore a chose to apply Heyneman's and Loxely's standards
as a general method of selecting my variables.
IV. HYPOTHESES:
Control Variables:
Parental Education:11 I collected data for two measures of parental education levels: years
schooled and a literacy dummy variable. As these two were correlated, I used only the more
significant of these measures of parental educational levels in the regression years of parental
education. I expect that the more years a parent has received, the more likely a student would be
able to perform well in school as the parent would be in a better position to share knowledge and
give advice to their children. The parent that has received more education may also value
education more, and thus be more likely to encourage their children to do well in high school.
Grade level: may be a relevant control variable. This variable will help get rid of GPAbiases that may exist in a given grade. A hypothetical example would be if the fourth grade
teacher gives much harder exams than the other teachers, and therefore everyone in fourth grade,
all else equal, may receive a lower GPA. I believe that this variable will also capture the effects
11 See hypothesis chart in the appendix

Amanda Gant
of student selection, that students self-select into higher grade levels, the strongest students

10

making it till the fifth year. Each successive grade in the Cusmapa high school has fewer and
fewer students. This is due to the fact that each year students drop out. I believe that the strongest
students make it to the last year of high school, and therefore think that as grade level rises, so
would GPA, giving grade level a positive correlation with GPA.
Female: The literature has shown that the coefficient associated with being a female may
go either way. If we take the US as an example, girls outperform boys in reading and writing,
while boys do better in math and science12 However, in Cusmapa, I believe that the quietness of
girls, honored as a characteristic of the Machista culture, may instill an apprehension to perform
well and boldly in class. Therefore, I expect that being a female will be negatively correlated
with GPAs.
Married: If the parents are married, then one will expect a more stable and united family
correlated with higher GPAs.
Live with parents: One can expect that the variable for living with the parents will add to
the ability to do well in school, thus this variable should have a positive correlation with GPA
variance.
After I decided on these most substantial control variables, I added in the test variables,
to check for robustness as well as for possible interrelations between the test variables. These test
variables include dummy variables for international child sponsorship and daily attendance to
Fabretto programs; as well as number of minutes away from the high school and number of
siblings in the household.
Some existing literature can act as a guide for forming hypotheses about many of these
test variables. Some literature examines the effects the out-of-school variables that I will be
12 Trends in Education and Equity of Women: 2004, National Center for Education Statistics

Amanda Gant 11
studying, however, just not within a different context. Studies tend to focus on the effect of outof-school characteristics on school attendance, not academic achievement. Nonetheless, I will be
able to cite a few papers to enforce my hypotheses for my test variables.
Test variables:
Distance from high school: The literature shows distance as a hindrance for school
attainment in Ghana13 as Morwena Griffiths cites distance from school as a reason that females
cannot attend school. In a paper by Gail Kelly, distance from school was mentioned as a reason
for missing school, especially for women.14
This variable, then, seems that it will be negatively correlated with GPAs. If children live
farther from the school, then they have to walk further to get there, spending more time and
energy on transportation. In Cusmapa, transportation to school usually is in the form of walking
in the forests on dirt paths, up and down mountainsides, and in between farm plots and grazing
land, to school. The students who attend school will have less time and energy for out-of-school
studying, possibly leading to lower performance. Distance away from school may also be
correlated with lower parental education levels both of which would be assumed also lead to a
negative effect in the GPA as well. I expect minutes away from the high school to be negatively
correlated with GPAs.
Family size: With respect to family size, a report from Knodel and Wongsith says that in
Thailand more children in the family exert a negative influence on the probability that a child
will attend secondary education. and that falling birth rates contribute to increasing educational
attainment in Thailand.15 Much research is done to show that the attainment level i.e. number
13 http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0305-4985%281994%2920%3A4%3C441%3AMAEDII%3E2.0.CO%3B2-Z
14 http://www.jstor.org/view/03050068/sp030065/03x1106n/0
15 http://www.jstor.org/view/00703370/di973869/97p0009c/0

Amanda Gant
of years they attend school - increases if there are less children in the family, but not much

12

literature looks at if a smaller family size is related to higher academic performance. However,
from works such as Knodel and Wongsith's I expect that smaller family size interpreted in my
data as a less number of siblings - leads to higher chances for educational achievement. This
may be because the parents can give more energy and time per child assisting him/her with
homework, and encouraging him/her to do well, when there are less children with whom to
divide time and energy. Children from a small family may also have access to more material
resources per capita as the children from a smaller family would have fewer siblings amongst
which to share. All of this reasoning leads me to hypothesize that the number of siblings is
negatively correlated with GPAs.
International Sponsorship: In Cusmapa sponsorships are given out on a first-come-basis
to whoever puts their name on the list. The sponsorship consists in the provision of a canasta
basica which means basic basket of goods. These goods include a months supply of oil, beans,
rice, some vegetables and soy products; school supplies such as a pencil and notebooks; and biyearly new shoes and school uniforms. This variable may pull in two directions; the argument for
a positive correlation is that these international sponsorships give a student the food, clothing and
school materials necessary in order to focus on schooling instead of working in order to buy
these goods necessary for school. However, the argument for negative correlation is that this
type of handout may make a student feel entitled to receive things for free and might erode his
perception of the need to try hard in school in order to receive economic benefits. I hypothesize
that this variable will have no significant effect.
Fabretto Attendance: My hypothesis is for this variable to have a positive correlation with
GPAs, as Fabretto offers re-enforcement of subjects that are taught in school. Fabretto center is

Amanda Gant 13
free of charge to those students who choose to participate, the students apply and commit to
whatever classes or activities for which they would sign up. Fabretto offers these students classes
in internet use, agricultural training, a choral group that goes on trips, and a lunch feeding
program. The extra activities that Fabretto offers high school students are motivating for students
and Fabretto's activities build connections between the students and the greater outside world.
A common variable that can be found in the literature, access to a library would
compare with my variable of attending an after school program, as Fabretto center has a library
that the high school students often use and the local high school does not have a library. In
Alexander and Simmons paper access to a library has had a positive coefficient. Attendance at
Fabretto is expected to have a positive correlation with GPAs.
V. Results
Population description information:
First I will go over basic characteristics of the population I have surveyed, and then tell
you about the main findings regarding each of the variables mentioned above. I will conclude
this section with other theories that are supported by my research, but that may be somewhat
tangential to my investigation for improved
Of all the 227 students I surveyed, 80% of the mothers and 79% of the fathers are literate
with an average of 5.39 and 6.04 years of schooling, respectively. 47.5% of the students I
surveyed are female. In the appendix, chart 1 shows the make up of the population by academic
year, there are fewer students in the upper grades, as each year students tend to drop out. Chart 2
shows us the professions that the students want to pursue. Many students in Cusmapa are
interested in choosing a professional life the first step is doing well in high school.
A series of Regressions:

Amanda Gant
(1) regress grades siblings minutes fab1 apad

14

16

I begin my regressions by using only my test variables. I do this to get an initial idea of
relative coefficient values. Grades are defined by grade point average (GPA) on a scale of 0100%. In this regression I see that my test variables explain only about 8 percent of variation.
From the beginning, international sponsorship is much less significant than the other test
variables, holding with my hypothesis that there are forces that would cause sponsorship to act in
conflicting directions. Attending Fabretto has a positive and significant coefficient, as predicted.
The number of siblings and number of minutes that a student lives from school also follow my
prediction of being negatively correlated with GPAs.
(2) regress grades momedu dadedu female siblings
In the second regression I combine the test variables with the variables that are generally
cited in development economics literature as important components to education; momedu and
dadedu respectively represent the number of years of school the mother received; female is a
dummy variable denoting the gender of the student. Regression 2 has a higher explanatory value,
explaining around 13 percent, though it has the name number of variables/degrees of freedom.
I now begin sensitivity analysis, which allows me to create better regressions with each
small tweak of the variables that I make. I do not show the regression results for all of the
decisions that I have made in order to come up with my final regressions, but instead will speak
about the key decisions that I have made along the way of developing these decisions.
(3) regress grades momedu dadedu siblings female minutes married momlive fab1 apad
I began by using all of the variables above in one regression. This produced only a
modest increase of my R squared from regression two to .1608. However, I saw that neither
mother nor father's education was very relevant. I believed that this could be because mother's
16 As I continue to discuss results, I will put the regression used in bold.

Amanda Gant
education is highly correlated with father's education, and thus the two variables will be

15

capturing the same variance in GPA. Regression 4 in the regression results chart illustrates this
correlation. I therefore decided to use only the more relevant of the two variables for my
regressions: mother's education. When I used mother's education instead of fathers education,
the R squared of the regression increased from .1560 to .1754.
I continued adding different variables from my data. The additional control variables
were yr, which means which year of high school -year one through year five- the student is in;
married denotes that a student's parents are married; momlive describes the situation of a student
who lives with their mother. Living with the mother, or having parents that were married both
had positive correlations with GPAs, in accordance with my hypothesis.
(4) regress grades momedu yr female siblings siblingsf minutes minutesf married momlive
apad fab1
There was an economically large economically and statistically negative correlation
between gender and GPAs: a -3.691 coefficient. This prompted me to examine interaction terms
in attempts to specify gender differences in the data. I created interaction terms for all of the
variables that I used in the previous regressions. I tested all of the variables in turn using the
different interaction terms to determine with which variables gender induces a difference. The
addition of chosen interaction terms result in an improvement from an R squared of .2521 to and
R square of .2822, without a decrease in the adj. R squared. I found that the interaction terms for
siblings and minutes walked to school have added the most in terms of explanatory power and
increased efficiency. The variables of siblings and minutes, that had previously been
insignificant in regressions, could more correctly tell their stories.
Siblings have been found to have a negative correlation with GPA for male students. For

Amanda Gant
each additional sibling that a male student has, his GPA is expected to go down about 1%.

16

However, the interaction term for female students effectively cancels any relationship between
GPAs and siblings.
Each minute that a girl walks to school is related negatively - at a 2.5% confidence level with GPA at the rate of -.6% from her GPA for every 10 minutes. To illustrate the magnitude, a
girl who lives two hours away from the school has an expected GPA that is 7.2 percentage points
lower than a girl who lives next door to the high school. On the other hand minutes walked to
school is shown to have little correlation with GPA for males.
5.) regress grades momedu yr female siblings siblingsf minutes minutesf married momlive
Through these regressions I learn that two of my test variables - daily Fabretto attendance
and international sponsorship - are not very robust or significant. In my regressions, the
coefficients for sponsorship are usually negative, ranging from -2.139 to -.635, but never show
better than 25% significance levels in the presence of control variables. The inconclusive results
for international sponsorship match my hypothesis. On the other hand, the insignificant
coefficients for Fabretto attendance go against my hypothesis that this coefficient would be
positive. In the regressions, Fabretto attendance coefficients ranges from .757 to 2.328, and
while all values are positive, matching my hypothesis, the coefficients are never very statistically
significant in the presence of control variables, with a 38.7% significant level being the most
significance it could show a far cry from the significance I was expecting. In the end, I decide
to drop these two test variables in favor of a more efficient regression.
VI. Analyzing results, conclusions and policy suggestions:
Some results matched with my hypotheses, such as the negative correlation between
being a female and GPAs also matched my hypothesis, as did the positive relationships between

Amanda Gant 17
GPAs and mother's education, parental marriage, living with the mother, and the higher years
that a student is in school.
Other results matched part of my hypothesis, such as my findings for the relationship
between siblings and GPAs. The number of siblings showed a negative effect with boys' GPAs,
but essentially no relationship with females' GPAs. I did not expect the variable to have a
different relationship with boys than with girls, and even intuitively, I think that females would
have been more effected by the number of siblings, as they might be the ones looked towards to
mother other siblings. Explaining the difference in the coefficients of siblings for females and
males requires a level of social analysis that I may not understand. I cannot assign a possible
reasoning to these results.
Minutes away from school was another variable that matched my hypothesis for one
gender - this time the correlation for the female students, and not the male students, matched my
hypothesis. Minutes away from the high school had a negative correlation with GPA only for the
girls, with no substantial effect for male students. Though I believed that a long walk to school
would tire out both the females and the males, we can return to Griffiths and Kelly's results
where distance also has a gendered phenomenon. Long walks may take a stronger toll on the
females' bodies than on the males' leaving the females with less energy.
The variables that I found to be insignificant also add substance to my findings. In two
variables, the mothers influence on GPA was felt more strongly than the father's. Mother's
education and living with the mother was found to be significant, while father's education and
living with the father were variables whose coefficients had less significance, and were excluded.
These results illustrate the relative importance of the mother in relationship with her children's
GPAs. The argument that mothers are important in the outcome of the academic performance of

Amanda Gant 18
their children, coupled with my findings that a female will receive a 5% lower GPA than a male,
all else equal, strengthens the call to focus resources on females, both young and old in
Cusmapa.
That international sponsorship was insignificant matched with my hypothesis. There is
no consistent relationship between this financial support and academic performance. The
sustenance provided by sponsorship programs has a value to itself. However, I am most
concerned with my finding that daily Fabretto attendance explains little variation in GPAs where
I had hoped to find a positive correlation. Explanations for the weak results could be that the
students who attend Fabretto do activities that are unrelated to directly improving their school
performance, such as eat free lunch, practice in the choir and learn computer skills all
important activities, but at best indirectly related to getting better grades in school.
Policy suggestions
It should be seen that gender inequality, and the importance of mothers, as shown by my
data, should support the movement for female focused policies in Cusmapa. I advocate the
creation of a girls' study group, where the girls would not only practice and study what they
learned in school, but discuss the importance of female leadership and initiative. These groups,
if correctly lead, might give girls the confidence they need to more confidently compete with
their male classmates. As far as siblings have been shown to have negative relationships with
males' GPAs, there is an argument to promote family planning in order to have fewer children.
The policy could be to educate all members of the family on the importance that smaller families
can mean for their household. Using this data about GPAs relationship to siblings could
constitute one point of discussion. Family planning could also be incorporated into the girls'
study group.

Amanda Gant 19
As the minutes to walk to school are negatively correlated with females' GPAs, more
educational centers should be constructed in the countryside as to supply schooling at a shorter
distance. Fortunately, in the case of Cusmapa, this is occurring right now with the support of the
Fabretto Foundation. They are currently holding classes in four centers throughout the
mountainsides of Cusmapa.
How to improve research:
The best the R squared from my regressions is 28.2%, meaning that many factors that
must explain GPA variance were unobserved in my regressions. These unobserved variables
may be initial ability to learn, attitude towards learning, and a specific proxy for hours spent
studying. One way to improve the research is to search for ways to make the unobserved
variables into observed variables by collecting more data. For initial ability, one may administer
an IQ test in order to obtain a proxy. Though this is difficult, it is an option that would be
possible in future research. Perhaps including a variable to account for hours spent studying
would also add good explanatory power to the regression.
In order to further strengthen the results I collected in my survey, I would also change the
way that I asked a certain question. On the section in my survey entitled My work almost no
students (only 8%) reported working, and those who did report working were unsure of how
many hours they worked or of their salary. However, I observe casually that many students in
Cusmapa actually do work around the house and in the farms. I believe that if I reworded the
question, briefly describing what constitutes work then I would have received more responses,
giving me another unobserved turned observed variable to test. I was planning using work as a
test variable in the regressions, but could not do so because of the inconclusive results that my
form of questioning produced.

Amanda Gant 20
Another important variable to include is one for parental income, or at least for familial
social economic status. I tried to collect parental income data, but as income is unstable in
Cusmapa, if there is income at all, the reporting on this variable was not reliable. There is underemployment, self-employment, bartering and unstable salaries. Since Cusmapa is a very selfsufficient community, much of the scant income depends on producing agricultural goods for
sale or barter. If I were to do this research again, I would look at not only income, but also at
other indicators of social economic status - possibly focusing the value of land and of livestock. I
would also add as dummy variables the presence of a sound system or a television which seem
to be a marker of social status; when the family is able to save, one of the first things they buy is
a stereo system and a television.
However, as to the importance of income variance in GPA variance in developing
countries, we may be able to draw conclusions from other literature: Bruce Fuller says that
social class explained just 3% of variance of achievement in East Indian children. Social class
could be a combination of parental education, which I include in my study, as well as an income
variable, which I do not have. The statement, then demonstrates that in communities made up of
generally poor people, variance in income is not as important as other variables. Parent's social
class has more correlation with variance of GPAs in industrialized countries.17
VII. Final conclusions:
In this paper I set out to find what variables are related with GPAs in Nicaragua, under
the argument that doing well in high school is important for the future of an individual student,
as well as for the economy of a country. We see that in Cusmapa there are gender inequalities to
deal with, and that literature is reinforced when the data shows that in Cusmapa, mother's
presence and education is relevant in the GPAs of their children. However, the coefficients for
17 Fuller, School Effects in the Third World

Amanda Gant
the most ambitious programs in Cusmapa, the Fabretto attendance center and international

21

sponsorships, were insignificant. These results should tarnish the value or effectiveness of these
programs, as they have goals in addition to improving academic achievement. In the case of
international sponsorships, the goal is material sustenance, and not specifically educational
achievement. With respect to the Fabretto Center's programming, the NGO should appreciate the
results of the data and use it as a guide to reevaluate the goals of its programming, and to include
more female-empowering programs.

Work Cited
Fuller, Bruce. What School Factors Raise Achievement in the Third World? Review of
Educational Research, Vol. 57, No. 3. (Autumn, 1987), pp. 255-292.
Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?
sici=00346543%28198723%2957%3A3%3C255%3AWSFRAI%3E2.0.CO%3B2-T
Griffiths, Morwenna and Marie Parker-Jenkins. Methodological and Ethical Dilemmas in
International Research: School Attendance and Gender in Ghana. Oxford Review of
Education, Vol. 20, No. 4. (1994), pp. 441-459.
Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=03054985%281994%2920%3A4%3C441%3AMAEDII%3E2.0.CO%3B2-Z
Hanushek, Eric A., and Ludger Woessmann. The role of education in economic growth. World
Bank Policy Research Working Paper 4122, February 2007
Heyneman, Stephen P. and William A. Loxley. The Distribution of Primary School Quality
within High- and Low-Income Countries Comparative Education Review, Vol. 27, No. 1.
(Feb., 1983), pp. 108-118.

Amanda Gant
Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=00104086%28198302%2927%3A1%3C108%3ATDOPSQ%3E2.0.CO%3B2-9

22

Heyneman, Stephen P. and William A. Loxley. The Effect of Primary-School Quality on

Academic Achievement Across Twenty-nine High- and Low-Income Countries. The
American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 88, No. 6. (May, 1983), pp. 1162-1194. Stable
URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=00029602%28198305%2988%3A6%3C1162%3ATEOPQO%3E2.0.CO%3B2-D
Kelly, Gail P. Setting State Policy on Women's Education in the Third World: Perspectives from
Comparative Research. Comparative Education, Vol. 23, No. 1, Special Number (10):
Sex Differences in Education. (1987), pp. 95-102.
Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=03050068%281987%2923%3A1%3C95%3ASSPOWE%3E2.0.CO%3B2-O
Simmons, John and Leigh Alexander. The Determinants of School Achievement in Developing
Countries: A Review of the Research. Economic Development and Cultural Change, Vol.
26, No. 2. (Jan., 1978), pp. 341-357.
Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=00130079%28197801%2926%3A2%3C341%3ATDOSAI%3E2.0.CO%3B2-R

Appendix
Regression Chart
Constant
Siblings

83.304

81.105

79.665

76.397

76.88

[.000]

[.000]

[.000]

[000]

[000]

-0.395*

-0.402*

-0.337

-0.934**

-1.019***

[0.069]

[.093]

[.179]

[.004]

[.002]

0.873**

1.039**

[.038]

[.015]

Siblingsf
Minutes

-0.035*

-0.023

0.01

0.013

[.007]

[.124]

[.613]

[.499]

-0.058**

-0.0583

[.026]

0.022

Minutesf
Fab1

2.328*

0.634

0.467

Amanda Gant
Apad

[.052]

[.638]

[.692]

-1.714

-0.747

-0.504

[.148]

[.561]

[.657]

-3.691***

-3.323

-5.723***

-6.455***

[.001]

[.005]

[.006]

[.002]

0.313

0.226

0.361**

0.349**

[.110]

[.278]

[.036]

[.042]

0.225

0.162

[.172]

[.351]
1.405***

1.426***

[.001]

[.001]

1.243

2.204**

2.505**

[.313]

[.043]

[.022]

2.17

3.875*

3.345

[.350]

[.070]

[.107]

Female
Momedu
Dadedu
Yr
Married
Momlive
Obs.

194

166

159

182

188

R Sq.

0.096

0.1467

0.1608

0.2827

0.2765

Adj R Sq

0.077

0.1255

0.1101

0.2363

0.2399

F stat

5.03

7.46

3.17

6.09

7.56

Variables, hypothesis and results chart

Result
Hyp.

m/f

Abbreviation

Variable

GPA

Academic performance

fab1

Daily Fabretto attendance

female

Gender

married

Marital status of student's parents

yr

Year in high school

momedu

Years of education received by mother

dadedu

Years of education received by father

-/0

siblings

Number of siblings a student has

0/-

minutes

apad

Number of minutes to school

23

Amanda Gant

24

Amanda Gant

Number of years in school

5
10

15

Mother's education in relation with time distance from school

50

100
Minutes from Cusmapa
95% CI
momedu

150

Fitted values

200

25

Amanda Gant

Cusmapa is located in the circle.

26

Amanda Gant

27

Survey Questions:
About you
1. Name
2. Age
3. What community do you live in?
4. How long is your walk to school?
5. Gender
School Questions
6. What grade are you in now?
7. What is your GPA?
8. How often do you miss school
a. Never
b. 1-2 month
c. 1 week
d. many days a week
9. When you miss school, what are the reasons:
a. Sick
b. Work*
c. Bored
d. Friends
e. Other, what: _____________
Work Questions
10. Do you have a job now?
11. What is your job?
12. If yes, how many hours per week?
13. How much money do you earn at your work?
Future Questions
14. Do you plan to go to University?
15. What job do you think youll have after finishing school?
16. How much money will you expect to make per month?
17. Do you think your socio-economic status will be equal to, the same or better than your
parents status?
Parent/family questions
18. How many siblings do you have?
19. Are your parents Married?
20. Do you live with your mother?
21. Can your mother read?
22. What is the highest level of schooling she completed?
23. What does your mom do for a living?
24. How much money does she earn?

Amanda Gant
25. Do you live with your father?
26. Can your father read?
27. What is the highest level of schooling he completed?
28. What does your father do for a living?
29. How much money does he earn?
Fabretto Questions
30. Are you sponsored?
31. By Which group?
32. Do you currently participate with Fabretto Programs in the past?
33. For how many years?
34. How often do you attend the Fabretto oratorio?
a. ____days/week
35. What classes do you take?

28