Experimental evidence on scaling up education reforms in Kenya

Tessa Bold, Mwangi Kimenyi, Germano Mwabu, Ng’ang’a, Alice and Justin Sandefur

Journal of Public Economics, 2018, vol. 168, issue C, 1-20

Abstract: What constraints arise when translating successful NGO programs to improve public services in developing countries into government policy? We report on a randomized trial embedded within a nationwide reform of teacher hiring in Kenyan government primary schools. New teachers offered a fixed-term contract by an international NGO significantly raised student test scores, while teachers offered identical contracts by the Kenyan government produced zero impact. Observable differences in teacher characteristics explain little of this gap. Instead, data suggests that bureaucratic and political opposition to the contract reform led to implementation delays and a differential interpretation of identical contract terms. Additionally, contract features that produced larger learning gains in both the NGO and government treatment arms were not adopted by the government outside of the experimental sample.

Keywords: Education; Kenya; Contract teachers; Randomized evaluation; External validity; State capacity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C93 I21 M51 O15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (75)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0047272718301518
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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:eee:pubeco:v:168:y:2018:i:c:p:1-20

DOI: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2018.08.007

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Public Economics is currently edited by R. Boadway and J. Poterba

More articles in Journal of Public Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().