Reducing Parent-School Information Gaps and Improving Education Outcomes: Evidence from High-Frequency Text Messages

Samuel Berlinski, Matias Busso, Taryn Dinkelman and Claudia Martínez A.

No 11234, IDB Publications (Working Papers) from Inter-American Development Bank

Abstract: We conducted an experiment in low-income schools in Chile to test the effects and behavioral changes triggered by a program that sends attendance, grade, and classroom behavior information to parents via weekly and monthly text messages. Our 18-month intervention raised average math GPA by 0.08 of a standard deviation and increased the share of students satisfying attendance requirements for grade promotion by 4.5 percentage points. Treatment effects were larger for students at higher risk of later grade retention and dropout. Leveraging existing school inputs for a light-touch, costeffective, and scalable information intervention can improve education outcomes in lower-income settings.

Keywords: Education; Chile; Information experiment; Parent-School communication (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D8 I25 N36 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu, nep-exp and nep-ure
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (13)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Reducing Parent-School Information Gaps and Improving Education Outcomes: Evidence from High-Frequency Text Messages (2021)
Working Paper: Reducing Parent-School Information Gaps and Improving Education Outcomes: Evidence from High-Frequency Text Messages (2021)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:idb:brikps:11234

DOI: 10.18235/0003257

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