Are students really learning? This is the primary question In Bangladesh, where more than one third of grade 3 students could not be classified as “readers” because they did not score high…

Also available in: Français  After months of early NY Penn Station mornings trying to remember whether to get on the Amtrak north to New Haven or south to DC, I am thrilled to transition from…

In a sector where a proliferation of research seemingly has contributed at least as much to confusion as to progress, the 2018 World Development Report (WDR), Learning to Realize Education’s…

Celebrating education. (Photo: World Bank) As the editor of the World Bank’s education blog, I get weekly submissions from our education experts from all corners of the globe. Provocative and…

“If you cannot measure it, you cannot improve it” Lord Kelvin   Despite the recent proliferation of standardized testing in education, there is still a significant number of countries that oppose…

A growing number of students in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa are enrolled in private primary or secondary schools. The World Development Report 2018 (on which I was a co-author) highlighted…

“Test and punish”? There’s a debate raging in American schools today: how (and how much) should children be tested? The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act created a system where all children in all…

The elusive quest to scale Some 15 years ago, I was in a small town in Hoshangabad district (India) attending a workshop with government schoolteachers, where we were examining student test scores…

I Will Always Write Back is the true story of Martin Ganda and Caitlin Alifirenka, who became pen pals -- between Zimbabwe and the USA -- in middle (or lower secondary) school. Over time, they…