An Empirical Study On The Participation Mechanism And Effect Of Shadow Education

The concept of shadow education is derived from the description of the classic theory of Stevenson&Baker(1992):shadow education takes place outside the mainstream education and takes part in cram school to improve academic performance.In terms of form,it is the "shadow" of mainstream education.From the content,it is a supplementary course closely related to high school entrance examination and college entrance examination.From the perspective of object,it is mainly aimed at primary and secondary school students in primary and secondary education.Different from the extra-curricular guidance of school organization obligation to help students with poor performance,shadow education is a kind of extracurricular counseling with the nature of economic behavior under the guidance of the market.As a kind of market behavior,shadow education has a great economic scale and social impact.The proportion and expenditure of shadow education products purchased by families are increasing.Shadow education has been concerned by more parents,but from the perspective of family needs of shadow education,compared with the mainstream education of "necessities",under what conditions will the family demand for shadow education come into being?From the results of shadow education,even if shadow education can improve learning performance and improve the probability of students passing the "examination",it may be limited to the improvement of exam taking skills in the short term.Can shadow education really improve students’ cognitive ability while improving their examination results?And for students with different cognitive abilities,will participation in shadow education affect their heterogeneity?To solve these problems,this paper uses the China Education Panel Based on the baseline data of survey(CEPS),this paper selects junior high school students as a special group,and studies the influencing factors of family shadow education expenditure decision by theoretical analysis,literature method,hurdle model,propensity score matching method and quantile regression from the family micro perspective,and estimates the effect of participating in shadow education on students’ cognitive ability.Specifically:(1)On the influencing factors of shadow education,this paper analyzes from the perspective of economics and sociology,and puts forward some hypotheses.From the perspective of economics,the family’s choice of shadow education is the rational choice of the family under the budget constraint;from the sociological point of view,the family’s choice of shadow education will be affected by the "reference group" in the educational environment of the students,resulting in irrational choice.Furthermore,the hurdle model is used to divide the family’s choice of shadow education into two stages to verify the role of these factors in "decision-making in participation" and "decision-making in quantity".(2)As for the research on the improvement of students’ cognitive ability by shadow education,this paper first uses OLS regression as a benchmark regression,and then uses the propensity score matching method to estimate the average impact effect(ATT)of shadow education on students who participate in shadow education,and the average impact effect(ATU)of shadow education on students who do not participate in shadow education After that,quantile regression was used to study whether there was heterogeneity in shadow education for students with different cognitive abilities?The results show that:(1)from the perspective of economics,the higher the expected income and the lower the cost of mainstream education,it will increase the probability of choosing shadow education and increase the purchase quantity of shadow education;(2)from the perspective of the educational environment of students,the lower the proportion of students in the county(District),students will increase the investment in shadow education in order to ensure that they are in the"dominant" position;The more popular shadow education is in the class,the more likely the students are to buy shadow education products,and the greater the number of shadow education products purchased by students;the situation of parents’participation in parent meeting does not affect the probability and quantity of shadow education for students who choose shadow education;(3)students’ participation in shadow education can improve students’ cognitive ability.At the same time,the influence effect of students is greater than that of students whose cognitive ability is in the middle.Based on the research results,this study puts forward policy recommendations from the government,family,public schools and other aspects:for parents and students,they should correctly view the role of shadow education on academic performance,families should rationally make shadow education decisions according to family capital,expected education income and mainstream education cost,and at the same time,they should correctly treat the impact of shadow education on students’ performance influence.For schools,schools can increase in-school tutoring for students with poor grades who do not participate in shadow education.For the government,high school enrollment should increase the proportion of cross regional enrollment,reasonably allocate educational resources,expand advantageous educational resources in underdeveloped areas,increase government subsidy investment in teaching facilities,and ensure the complete software and hardware of the school and ensure students’ normal class.In terms of teachers,teachers should be trained regularly to improve the quality of teaching,so that every student can enjoy the same quality of education and promote education fairness.