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70
Incentives work: getting teachers to come to school.
, 2012
"... Abstract We use a randomized experiment and a structural model to test whether monitoring and financial incentives can reduce teacher absence and increase learning in rural India. In treatment schools, teachers' attendance was monitored daily using cameras, and their salaries were made a nonli ..."
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Cited by 166 (9 self)
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Abstract We use a randomized experiment and a structural model to test whether monitoring and financial incentives can reduce teacher absence and increase learning in rural India. In treatment schools, teachers' attendance was monitored daily using cameras, and their salaries were made a nonlinear function of attendance. Absenteeism by teachers fell by 21 percentage points relative to the control group, and children's test scores increased by 0.17 standard deviations. We estimate a structural dynamic labor supply model and find that teachers responded strongly to the financial incentives, and that this alone can explain the difference between the two groups. Our model is used to compute cost-minimizing compensation policies. * This project is a collaborative exercise involving many people. Foremost, we are deeply indebted to Seva Mandir, and especially to Neelima Khetan and Priyanka Singh, who made this evaluation possible. We thank Ritwik Sakar and Ashwin Vasan for their excellent work coordinating the fieldwork. Greg Fischer, Shehla Imran, Callie Scott, Konrad Menzel, and Kudzaishe Takavarasha provided superb research assistance. For their helpful comments, we thank referees, Abhijit Banerjee, Rachel Glennerster, Michael Kremer and Sendhil Mullainathan. We owe a special thank to the referees, who made substantial suggestions that considerably
Performance Pay and Teachers’ Effort, Productivity and Grading
- Ethics”, American Economic Review
, 2009
"... This paper presents evidence about the effect of individual monetary incentives on English and math teachers in Israel. Teachers were rewarded with cash bonuses for improving their students ’ performance in high-school matriculation exams. The main identification strategy is based on measurement err ..."
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Cited by 60 (10 self)
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This paper presents evidence about the effect of individual monetary incentives on English and math teachers in Israel. Teachers were rewarded with cash bonuses for improving their students ’ performance in high-school matriculation exams. The main identification strategy is based on measurement error in the assignment to treatment variable that produced a randomized treatment sample. The incentives led to significant improvements in test taking rates, conditional pass rates, and mean test scores. Improvements were mediated through changes in teaching methods, enhanced after-school teaching, and increased responsiveness to students ’ needs. No evidence was found of manipulation of test scores by teachers. (JEL I21, J31, J45) Performance-related pay for teachers is being introduced in many countries, amidst much controversy and opposition from teachers and unions alike. 1 The rationale for these programs is the notion that incentive pay may motivate teachers to improve their performance. However, there is little evidence of the effect of changes in teachers ’ incentives in schools. In this paper, I present evidence from an experimental program that offered teachers bonus payments on the
No margin, no mission? A field experiment on incentives for public service delivery”, forthcoming
- Journal of Public Economics.
, 2014
"... a b s t r a c t a r t i c l e i n f o We conduct a field experiment to evaluate the effect of extrinsic rewards, both financial and non-financial, on the performance of agents recruited by a public health organization to promote HIV prevention and sell condoms. In this setting: (i) non-financial re ..."
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Cited by 28 (6 self)
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a b s t r a c t a r t i c l e i n f o We conduct a field experiment to evaluate the effect of extrinsic rewards, both financial and non-financial, on the performance of agents recruited by a public health organization to promote HIV prevention and sell condoms. In this setting: (i) non-financial rewards are effective at improving performance; (ii) the effect of both types of rewards is stronger for pro-socially motivated agents; and (iii) both types of rewards are effective when their relative value is high. The findings illustrate that extrinsic rewards can improve the performance of agents engaged in public service delivery, and that non-financial rewards can be effective in settings where the power of financial incentives is limited.
Improving Education in the Developing World: What Have We Learned from Randomized Evaluations? Annual Review of Economics,
, 2009
"... Abstract Across a range of contexts, reductions in education costs and provision of subsidies can boost school participation, often dramatically. Decisions to attend school seem subject to peer effects and time-inconsistent preferences. Merit scholarships, school health programs, and information ab ..."
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Cited by 27 (0 self)
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Abstract Across a range of contexts, reductions in education costs and provision of subsidies can boost school participation, often dramatically. Decisions to attend school seem subject to peer effects and time-inconsistent preferences. Merit scholarships, school health programs, and information about returns to education can all cost-effectively spur school participation. However, distortions in education systems, such as weak teacher incentives and eliteoriented curricula, undermine learning in school and much of the impact of increasing existing educational spending. Pedagogical innovations designed to address these distortions (such as technology-assisted instruction, remedial education, and tracking by achievement) can raise test scores at a low cost. Merely informing parents about school conditions seems insufficient to improve teacher incentives, and evidence on merit pay is mixed, but hiring teachers locally on short-term contracts can save money and improve educational outcomes. School vouchers can cost-effectively increase both school participation and learning.
Corrupting Learning: Evidence from Missing Federal Education Funds
, 2009
"... This paper examines if money matters in education by looking at whether missing resources due to corruption affect student outcomes. We use data from the auditing of Brazil’s local governments to construct objective measures of corruption involving educational block grants transferred from the centr ..."
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Cited by 9 (0 self)
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This paper examines if money matters in education by looking at whether missing resources due to corruption affect student outcomes. We use data from the auditing of Brazil’s local governments to construct objective measures of corruption involving educational block grants transferred from the central government to municipalities. Using variation in the incidence of corruption across municipalities and controlling for students’, schools ’ and municipal characteristics, we find a significant negative association between corruption and the school performance of primary school students. Students residing in municipalities where corruption in education was detected score 0.35 standard deviations less on standardized tests, and have significantly higher dropout and failure rates. Using a rich dataset of school infrastructure and teacher and principal questionnaires, we also find that school inputs such as computer labs, teaching supplies, and teacher training are reduced in the presence of corruption. Overall, our findings suggest that in environments where basic schooling resources are lacking, money does matter for education achievement. JEL: D73, I21, H72 ∗We are grateful to the staff at the CGU for support and clarifications of the auditing process, and to Elaine Pazzelo and Roberta Biondi for help with the education data. We thank David Card, Miguel
2013): "The Fiscal Costs of Weak Governance: Evidence from Teacher Absence in India
"... The relative return to input-augmentation versus inefficiency-reduction strategies for improving education system performance is a key open question for education policy in low-income countries. Using a new nationally-representative panel dataset of schools across 1297 villages in India, we show tha ..."
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Cited by 7 (6 self)
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The relative return to input-augmentation versus inefficiency-reduction strategies for improving education system performance is a key open question for education policy in low-income countries. Using a new nationally-representative panel dataset of schools across 1297 villages in India, we show that the large investments over the past decade have led to substantial improvements in input-based measures of school quality, but only a modest reduction in inefficiency as measured by teacher absence. In our data, 23.6 % of teachers were absent during unannounced visits with an associated fiscal cost of $1.5 billion/year. We find two robust correlations in the nationally-representative panel data that corroborate findings from smaller-scale experiments. First, reductions in student-teacher ratios are correlated with increased teacher absence. Second, in-creases in the frequency of school monitoring are strongly correlated with lower teacher absence. Using these results, we show that investing in better governance by increasing the frequency of monitoring could be over ten times more cost effective at increasing teacher-student contact time (net of teacher absence) than hiring more teachers. Thus,
Incentive Strength and Teacher Productivity: Evidence from a GroupBased Teacher Incentive Pay System.” NBER Working Paper No
"... We estimate the impact of incentive strength on student achievement under a groupbased teacher incentive pay program. Awards are based on the performances of students within a grade, school and subject, providing substantial variation in group size. Using the share of students in a grade-subject enr ..."
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Cited by 6 (1 self)
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We estimate the impact of incentive strength on student achievement under a groupbased teacher incentive pay program. Awards are based on the performances of students within a grade, school and subject, providing substantial variation in group size. Using the share of students in a grade-subject enrolled in a teacher’s classes as a proxy for incentive strength, we find that student achievement improves when a teacher becomes responsible for more students post program implementation: mean effects are between 0.01 and 0.02 standard deviations for a 10 percentage point increase in share for math, English and social studies. Mean science estimates are small and are not statistically significant. We also find substantial heterogeneity by share. For all four subjects studied, effect sizes start at 0.05 to 0.09 standard deviations for a 10 percentage point increase in share when share is initially close to zero and fade out as share increases. Calculations based of these estimates show large positive effects overall of group incentive pay on achievement.
Risk protection, service use, and health outcomes under colombia’s health insurance program for the poor
- American Economic Journal: Applied Economics
, 2013
"... Unexpected medical care spending imposes considerable financial risk on developing country households. Based on managed care models of health insurance in wealthy countries, Colombia’s Régimen Subsidiado is a publicly financed insurance program targeted to the poor, aiming both to provide risk prote ..."
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Cited by 3 (0 self)
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Unexpected medical care spending imposes considerable financial risk on developing country households. Based on managed care models of health insurance in wealthy countries, Colombia’s Régimen Subsidiado is a publicly financed insurance program targeted to the poor, aiming both to provide risk protection and to promote allocative efficiency in the use of medical care. Using a “fuzzy ” regression discontinuity design, we find that the program has shielded the poor from some financial risk while increasing the use of traditionally under-utilized preventive services – with measurable health gains.
Selecting Growth Measures for School and Teacher Evaluations
, 2012
"... The specifics of how growth models should be constructed and used to evaluate schools and teachers is a topic of lively policy debate in states and school districts nationwide. In this paper we take up the question of model choice and examine three competing approaches. The first approach, reflected ..."
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Cited by 2 (0 self)
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The specifics of how growth models should be constructed and used to evaluate schools and teachers is a topic of lively policy debate in states and school districts nationwide. In this paper we take up the question of model choice and examine three competing approaches. The first approach, reflected in the popular student growth percentiles (SGPs) framework, eschews all controls for student covariates and schooling environments. The second approach, typically associated with value-added models (VAMs), controls for student background characteristics and aims to identify the causal effects of schools and teachers. The third approach, also VAM-based, fully levels the playing field so that the correlation between school- and teacher-level growth measures and student demographics is essentially zero. We argue that the third approach is the most desirable for use in educational evaluation systems. Our case rests on personnel economics, incentive-design theory, and the potential role that growth measures can play in improving instruction in K-12 schools. The authors are in the Department of Economics at the University of Missouri – Columbia. In addition, Podgursky is a Fellow of the George W. Bush Institute at Southern Methodist
Teacher compensation systems in the united states k-12 public school system
- National Tax Journal
, 2011
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