How can education systems be better? A round-up of the 2017 RISE conference

David Evans:

RISE – Research on Improving Systems of Education – seeks to answer the question, “How can education systems be reformed to deliver better learning for all?” As Justin Sandefur said in his opening remarks, “we need more than just piecemeal research and piecemeal reform.” How? “Invest over the long-term in real, cutting-edge, new empirical research from the all-star teams you’re going to hear from over the next couple of days.” The whole two-day conference is available for online streaming (Day 1 and Day 2); the full program has links to many of the papers.

Here are some of the greatest hits among the research papers presented, including a bonus track that wasn’t on the program (at the end of the pedagogy section). If you saw a paper you enjoyed and it isn’t below, please add it in the comments!

Politics of Reform
Recent dramatic improvements in learning outcomes in Ecuador hinged on 5 key reforms: “Higher standards for new recruitment, higher standards for entry into teacher training, regular evaluation of individual teacher performance, promotions based on tested competency rather than years of service, and dismissal from the civil service after multiple poor performance evaluations.” Schneider, Estarellas, & Bruns identify 5 political advantages that let the government get those reforms through: “strong public support grounded in a pervasive sense of education in crisis…, sustained presidential support, the commodity boom of the 2000s, continuity in the government reform team, and communications strategies that built popular sympathy for the government position against union efforts to block reforms.” [paper; video of talk @7m]
Alternative Modalities of Provision
Providing report cards on student test scores to both parents and schools that showed performance within the school and across schools led to big increases in test scores for private school students. Giving report cards just to schools didn’t make a difference. The result seems to be from parents moving kids to better quality private schools (rather than improvements in quality of the current schools) (Afridi, Barooah, & Somanathan) [paper]
In Sindh, Pakistan, the government provided public resources to private schools, resulting in big increases in enrollment and test scores for both girls and boys. Barrera-Osorio et al. then estimate how private school entrepreneurs choose what private school characteristics to offer [paper; video of talk @7m]
In Punjam, Pakistan, teacher value added is high, but teacher characteristics (including the first years of experience and content knowledge) explain little of it. In the public sector, cutting teacher wages by 35 percent did not affect teacher value added (Bau & Das) [paper; video of talk @28m]
What’s the best way to improve children’s school readiness? The Gambia invited researchers to test two alternative methods, community-based centers in some communities and kindergartens with upgraded quality in others. Neither improved readiness on average, but the upgraded kindergartens were better for the least advantaged children (Blimpo et al.). [paper; video of talk @50m]