Making the Grade: The Sensitivity of Education Program Effectiveness to Input Choices and Outcome Measures

Jason Kerwin and Rebecca Thornton

No ct9sj, SocArXiv from Center for Open Science

Abstract: This paper demonstrates the acute sensitivity of education program effectiveness to the choices of inputs and outcome measures, using a randomized evaluation of a mother-tongue literacy program. The program raises reading scores by 0.64SDs and writing scores by 0.45SDs. A reduced-cost version instead yields statistically-insignificant reading gains and some large negative effects (-0.33SDs) on advanced writing. We combine a conceptual model of education production with detailed classroom observations to examine the mechanisms driving the results; we show they could be driven by the program initially lowering productivity before raising it, and potentially by missing complementary inputs in the reduced-cost version.

Date: 2020-03-06
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (15)

Downloads: (external link)
https://osf.io/download/5f160a990870f2012109b329/

Related works:
Journal Article: Making the Grade: The Sensitivity of Education Program Effectiveness to Input Choices and Outcome Measures (2021)
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:osf:socarx:ct9sj

DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/ct9sj

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in SocArXiv from Center for Open Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by OSF ().