Beyond Short-Term Learning Gains: the Impact of Outsourcing Schools in Liberia After Three Years

Autor:	Justin Sandefur, Mauricio Romero
Rok vydání:	2021
Předmět:	Economics and Econometrics Government business.industry media_common.quotation_subject medicine.disease Outsourcing Fluency Sexual abuse Reading (process) Cohort medicine Demographic economics Psychology business Words per minute Corporal punishment media_common
Zdroj:	The Economic Journal. 132:1600-1619
ISSN:	1468-0297 0013-0133
DOI:	10.1093/ej/ueab087
Popis:	After one year, outsourcing the management of ninety-three randomly-selected government primary schools in Liberia to eight private operators led to modest learning gains (Romero, Sandefur, & Sandholtz, in press). In this paper, we revisit the program two years later. After the first year, treatment effects on learning gains plateaued (e.g., the intention-to-treat effect on English was .18Iƒ after one year, and .16Iƒ after three years, equivalent to 4 words per minute additional reading fluency for the cohort that started in first grade). Looking beyond learning gains, the program reduced corporal punishment (by 4.6 percentage points from a base of 51%), but increased dropout (by 3.3 percentage points from a base of 15%) and failed to reduce sexual abuse. Behind these average effects, the identity of the contractor mattered. Despite facing similar contracts and settings, some providers produced uniformly positive results, while others present stark trade-offs between learning gains, access to education, child safety, and financial sustainability.
Databáze:	OpenAIRE
Externí odkaz:	https://explore.openaire.eu/search/publication?articleId=doi_________::555e52629374964b466dddc57edd5a3c https://doi.org/10.1093/ej/ueab087 Zobrazit plný text záznamu