Phonics and Foreign Aid: Can America Teach the World to Read?

Justin Sandefur, Thomaz Alvares de Azevedo, Xiaomin Ju and Thi Le
Additional contact information
Thomaz Alvares de Azevedo: MSI, A Tetra Tech Company
Xiaomin Ju: Center for Global Development
Thi Le: Center for Global Development

No 668, Working Papers from Center for Global Development

Abstract: Over two decades and dozens of countries, the United States Agency for International Development has refined a package of support for early-grade reading, often referred to as “structured pedagogy”, which includes textbooks, teacher training, coaching, and lesson plans. Programs are implemented by American companies in public schools and evaluated using harmonized learning metrics, yielding a portfolio of 12 experimental and 15 difference-in-difference evaluations. Results vary widely, but on average programs increase oral reading fluency by approximately 3 words from a base of 13 correct words per minute in early primary. The average program costs about $200 per pupil, roughly equivalent to doubling school spending. Larger programs cost much less per pupil, but yield (insignificantly) smaller impacts. Newer programs yield somewhat bigger impacts, consistent with the idea that program evaluation can improve the quality of aid through iterative learning.

Keywords: education; early-grade reading assessments; impact evaluation; foreign aid; USAID (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F35 I25 O15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 71 pages
Date: 2023-11-20
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev and nep-inv
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cgdev.org/publication/phonics-and-fore ... l&utm_campaign=repec

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cgd:wpaper:668

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Center for Global Development Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Publications Manager ().