Beyond Short-term Learning Gains: The Impact of Outsourcing Schools in Liberia after Three Years

Mauricio Romero and Justin Sandefur

No 521, Working Papers from Center for Global Development

Abstract: After one year, outsourcing the management of ninety-three randomly-selected government primary schools in Liberia to eight private operators led to modest learning gains (Romero, Sandefur, & Sandholtz, in press). In this paper, we revisit the program two years later. After the first year, treatment effects on learning gains plateaued (e.g., the intention-to-treat effect on English was .18σ after one year, and .16σ after three years, equivalent to 4 words per minute additional reading fluency for the cohort that started in first grade). Looking beyond learning gains, the program reduced corporal punishment (by 4.6 percentage points from a base of 51%), but increased dropout (by 3.3 percentage points from a base of 15%) and failed to reduce sexual abuse. Behind these average effects, the identity of the contractor mattered. Despite facing similar contracts and settings, some providers produced uniformly positive results, while others present stark trade-offs between learning gains, access to education, child safety, and financial sustainability.

Keywords: Public-private partnership; randomized controlled trial; school management (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C93 I25 I28 L32 L33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 56 pages
Date: 2019-12-15
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Journal Article: Beyond Short-Term Learning Gains: the Impact of Outsourcing Schools in Liberia After Three Years (2022)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cgd:wpaper:521

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