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South Asia

What a new preschool study tells us about early child education – and about impact evaluation

David Evans's picture
When I talk to people about impact evaluation results, I often get two reactions:
  1. Sure, that intervention delivered great results in a well-managed pilot. But it doesn’t tell us anything about whether it would work at a larger scale. 
  2. Does this result really surprise you? (With both positive results and null results, I often hear, Didn’t we already know that intuitively?)

A recent paper – “Cognitive science in the field: A preschool intervention durably enhances intuitive but not formal mathematics” – by Dillon et al., provides answers to both of these, as well as giving new insights into the design of effective early child education.

Technoskeptics pay heed: A computer-assisted learning program that delivers learning results

David Evans's picture
Some years ago, a government I was working with really wanted to increase the data they had on their own education system. They didn’t have great data on student attendance or teacher attendance, much less on tardiness or instruction time. They designed an information management system with swipe cards for every student and teacher to use going in and out of classrooms, all of which would feed wirelessly into the district office, allowing real-time interventions to improve education. It sounded amazing! And it fell apart before it ever began.

Give a man a fish and feed him for life? Experimental evidence on the long-term effects of grants on Sri Lankan Microenterprises

David McKenzie's picture

Typical policies to improve the incomes of poor households and their businesses are based on the sustained provision of services – be it microfinance with multiple loan cycles and regular meetings; conditional cash transfers with regular transfers over a period of years; or business training programs which are based on the idea that capital along is not enough – as in the proverb “give a man a fish and he eats for a day, teach a man to fish and he can feed himself for life”.

Schools is Good: A Reply to Lant Pritchett

Berk Ozler's picture

Lant Pritchett once said to me “Thanks for the comments. As usual they are all very smart and well-informed and I disagree with most.” I feel similarly regarding his very popular piece posted here last week (already one of the top 10 most popular posts in our blog's short history) on how CCTs are forcing children in developing countries into terrible schools. So, here goes a reply…

Dear Lant,

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