Willing but Not Able: Short-Term Experimental Evidence on Parent Empowerment and School Quality

Elizabeth Beasley () and Elise Huillery
Additional contact information
Elizabeth Beasley: ECON - Département d'économie (Sciences Po) - Sciences Po - Sciences Po - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

SciencePo Working papers Main from HAL

Abstract: Giving power over school management and spending decisions to communities has been a favored strategy to increase school quality, but its effectiveness may depend on local capacity. Grants are one form of such a transfer of power. Short-term responses of a grant to school committees in Niger show that parents increased participation and responsibility, but these efforts did not improve quality on average. Enrollment at the lowest grades increased and school resources improved, but teacher absenteeism increased, and there was no measured impact on test scores. An analysis of heterogeneous impacts and spending decisions provides additional insight into these dynamics. Overall, the findings suggest that programs based on parent participation should take levels of community capacity into account: even when communities are willing to work to improve their schools, they may not be able to do so. The short-term nature of the experiment reduces the extent to which the results can be generalized.

Keywords: Community participation; education; parental involvement; randomized trial; school-based management. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Published in World Bank Economic Review, 2017, 31 (2), ⟨10.1093/wber/lhv064⟩

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
Working Paper: Willing but Not Able: Short-Term Experimental Evidence on Parent Empowerment and School Quality (2017)
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:hal:spmain:hal-01645850

DOI: 10.1093/wber/lhv064

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in SciencePo Working papers Main from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Contact - Sciences Po Departement of Economics ().