Resumen
This paper measures the contributions of different factors within the educational system that affect the quality of education. We compare the academic achievements of public and private schools (mainly at the secondary level) in one country: Chile. We chose Chile because it has the most extensive voucher-type program for subsidizing private education and because it has a fairly wide and accessible amount of data. Among other factors, we study the influence of the public-private divide, the socio-economic levels of the students and the pupil-teacher ratio. The quality of education is measured by the performance of students in standardized national tests administered to all schools in Chile. The results indicate that the socio-economic levels of the students are crucial in explaining performance of the different schools.Keywords: Public education, private education, quality of education, economic development