This paper looks at the relationship between educational outcomes performance and educational outcomes inequality. It uses cross country regression analysis for the year 2003 to assess the potential effect of educational outcomes inequality, along with two other variables, the degree of government religious regulation and per capita income, on school effectiveness, as measured by mean country literacy test scores of fifteen year old students. It finds that the average levels of math, science, and reading scores of students in a nation are negatively related to the degree of inequality of student scores within a country.ABSTRACT FROM AUTHORCopyright of Journal of Global Business Issues is the property of Journal of Global Business Issues and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract

National Educational Performance and Educational Inequality William DiPietro, Daemen College ABSTRACT This paper looks at the relationship between educational outcomes performance and educational outcomes inequality. It uses cross country regression analysis for the year 2003 to assess the potential effect of educational outcomes inequality, along with two other variables, the degree of government religious regulation and per capita income, on school effectiveness, as measured by mean country literacy test scores of fifteen year old students. It finds that the average levels of math, science, and reading scores of students in a nation are negatively related to the degree of inequality of student scores within a country. It is rarely the case that even a single day goes by without some politician getting on the stump and espousing the need for improvement in educational institutions for continued health and growth of the economy. Economists have identified human capital as an essential factor for economic growth. The changing structure of modern economies increasing requires skilled and knowledge workers, so that, in addition to physical capital accumulation, knowledge accumulation, and education, the process of knowledge accumulation, requires greater and greater attention for economic prosperity. In a globalized world, with more intense competition, with less protected national markets, and with far greater need for reliance on innovation, quality education is fast becoming a prerequisite for undertaking any successful business. One possible determinant of country's educational performance is educational equality. As are economic growth and fairness in the distribution of income, equity in the educational process is a desirable goal of national economic policy. But, in addition, changes in the degree of educational equality have consequences for the two other policy objectives because the different policy goals are all interrelated. Greater educational equality (smaller educational inequality) can cause higher future income equality. In turn, greater equality in the distribution of income is likely to lead to greater equality in education. The direction of the effect of educational equality on economic growth is more complicated.