Participation in a School Incentive Programme in India

Education policy has recently focused on improving accountability and incentives of public providers for actual learning outcomes, often with school-based reward programmes for high performers. The Learning Guarantee Programme in Karnataka, India, is prominent among such efforts, providing cash tran...

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Main Authors:	Barnhardt, Sharon, Karlan, Dean, Khemani, Stuti
Format:	Journal Article
Language:	EN
Published:	2012
Subjects:	Analysis of Education I210 Education: Government Policy I280
Online Access:	http://hdl.handle.net/10986/5039

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recordtype	oai_dc
spelling	okr-10986-50392021-04-23T14:02:20Z Participation in a School Incentive Programme in India Barnhardt, Sharon Karlan, Dean Khemani, Stuti Analysis of Education I210 Education: Government Policy I280 Education policy has recently focused on improving accountability and incentives of public providers for actual learning outcomes, often with school-based reward programmes for high performers. The Learning Guarantee Programme in Karnataka, India, is prominent among such efforts, providing cash transfers to government schools that achieve learning at specified high levels. This study examines whether schools that self-selected into the incentive programme are different than those that did not. The answer has important implications for how to evaluate the impact of such a programme. Although we find no significant differences in resources and characteristics, we do find significant and substantial differences in test scores prior to selection into the programme, with better performing schools more likely to opt-in. These findings also provide insight into how incentive-based programmes that focus on levels of (rather than changes in) achievement can exacerbate inequality in education. Failing schools, since they are more likely to opt-out of incentive programmes, are likely to require other targeted programmes in order to improve. In addition, our findings reinforce the value of randomised controlled trials to evaluate incentive programmes since evaluations that rely on matching schools based on resources (if, for instance, pre-programme test scores are unavailable) will be biased if resources poorly predict test scores. 2012-03-30T07:30:58Z 2012-03-30T07:30:58Z 2009 Journal Article Journal of Development Studies 00220388 http://hdl.handle.net/10986/5039 EN http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/igo World Bank Journal Article India
repository_type	Digital Repository
institution_category	Foreign Institution
institution	Digital Repositories
building	World Bank Open Knowledge Repository
collection	World Bank
language	EN
topic	Analysis of Education I210 Education: Government Policy I280
spellingShingle	Analysis of Education I210 Education: Government Policy I280 Barnhardt, Sharon Karlan, Dean Khemani, Stuti Participation in a School Incentive Programme in India
geographic_facet	India
relation	http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/igo
description	Education policy has recently focused on improving accountability and incentives of public providers for actual learning outcomes, often with school-based reward programmes for high performers. The Learning Guarantee Programme in Karnataka, India, is prominent among such efforts, providing cash transfers to government schools that achieve learning at specified high levels. This study examines whether schools that self-selected into the incentive programme are different than those that did not. The answer has important implications for how to evaluate the impact of such a programme. Although we find no significant differences in resources and characteristics, we do find significant and substantial differences in test scores prior to selection into the programme, with better performing schools more likely to opt-in. These findings also provide insight into how incentive-based programmes that focus on levels of (rather than changes in) achievement can exacerbate inequality in education. Failing schools, since they are more likely to opt-out of incentive programmes, are likely to require other targeted programmes in order to improve. In addition, our findings reinforce the value of randomised controlled trials to evaluate incentive programmes since evaluations that rely on matching schools based on resources (if, for instance, pre-programme test scores are unavailable) will be biased if resources poorly predict test scores.
format	Journal Article
author	Barnhardt, Sharon Karlan, Dean Khemani, Stuti
author_facet	Barnhardt, Sharon Karlan, Dean Khemani, Stuti
author_sort	Barnhardt, Sharon
title	Participation in a School Incentive Programme in India
title_short	Participation in a School Incentive Programme in India
title_full	Participation in a School Incentive Programme in India
title_fullStr	Participation in a School Incentive Programme in India
title_full_unstemmed	Participation in a School Incentive Programme in India
title_sort	participation in a school incentive programme in india
publishDate	2012
url	http://hdl.handle.net/10986/5039
_version_	1764393696095109120

Participation in a School Incentive Programme in India

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