Early Childhood Development and Voucher Programs: Evaluation Using Randomized Assignment

幼儿发展和优惠券计划：使用随机分配进行评估

• 批准号: 9710000
• 负责人: Michael Kremer
• 金额: $ 17.97万
• 依托单位: National Bureau of Economic Research Inc
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 1998
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 1998-03-01 至 2002-02-28
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=9710000&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Early; Childhood; Development; Voucher; Programs

Education is widely seen as essential for economic growth in developing countries. Yet despite a large number of studies, there are significant gaps in our knowledge of the relative effectiveness of different education policies. In part, this is because it is difficult to separate out the effect of school inputs from unobserved variables which also affect education, and may be correlated with school inputs. This project will take advantage of randomized treatment to evaluate two policies that have been increasingly advocated by education specialists: promotion of Early Childhood Development (ECD) and provision of vouchers to allow students to attend private schools. Both topics are of interest not only to developing countries but also to developed countries. The study of early childhood development will be conducted in cooperation with a Dutch nonprofit organization which provides educational assistance to Kenyan schools. The principal investigator taught secondary school in rural Kenya for one year, and is currently collaborating with the organization on a prospective, randomized study of primary education in rural Kenya. This study will be extended to examine 100 locally run preschools. Teachers in these preschools typically have no training beyond secondary school, and receive about $10 per month in salary financed by parent fees. Under this study, one half of the preschools will be randomly assigned to receive in-service training and salary supplements for teachers, while the other half will serve as a comparison group. The study of vouchers will examine the Subsidios PACES program in Colombia. This program, which has been in operation since 1992, was designed to allow students from poor households to attend private secondary schools. Because there were not enough funds to provide all applicants with vouchers, the vouchers were allocated using a lottery. Outcomes between 1,500 lottery winners and 1,500 lottery losers will be compared. The effect of both programs on educational outcomes will be examined, including enrollment, daily attendance, grade repetition, and scores on achievement tests. Further, the effects of the programs on household decision making and on school organization will be analyzed. Also, the project will examine whether the effects of the programs vary with students' sex, socio economic status, age, or current school performance Each study also raises its own specific sets of questions. For the preschool study, the questions include the following: I ) Do untrained teachers change their method of child-care after receiving training? 2) Do absenteeism rates among teachers fall when they receive salary supplements? 3) Do parents increase or decrease their support of schools when salary supplements were provided to teachers? 4) Does improved pre primary education pay for itself by reducing grade repetition in primary school? The study of the voucher program will examine questions such as: 1) How many of the students supported by vouchers in Colombia would have attended school in the absence of a voucher program? 2) How many would have attended private schools? 3) What is the impact of the program on educational attainment and cognitive achievement?

教育被广泛认为是发展中国家经济增长的关键。然而，尽管进行了大量的研究，但我们对不同教育政策的相对有效性的认识仍存在重大差距。部分原因是，很难将学校投入的影响与未观察到的变量分开，这些变量也影响教育，并可能与学校投入相关。该项目将利用随机处理来评估教育专家日益倡导的两项政策：促进儿童早期发展和提供代金券，使学生能够进入私立学校。这两个专题不仅对发展中国家而且对发达国家都有意义。 将与一个向肯尼亚学校提供教育援助的荷兰非营利组织合作进行幼儿发展研究。首席研究员在肯尼亚农村地区的中学任教一年，目前正在与本组织合作，对肯尼亚农村地区的小学教育进行前瞻性随机研究。这项研究将扩大到100所当地开办的幼儿园。这些幼儿园的教师通常没有接受过中学以上的培训，每月的工资约为10美元，由家长费用支付。在这项研究中，一半的幼儿园将被随机分配接受在职培训和教师工资补贴，另一半则作为对照组。 对代金券的研究将审查哥伦比亚的PACES补贴方案。该方案自1992年以来一直在实施，旨在使贫困家庭的学生能够进入私立中学。由于没有足够的资金向所有申请人提供代金券，代金券是通过抽签分配的。将比较1，500名彩票中奖者和1，500名彩票中奖者之间的结果。 这两个项目对教育成果的影响将被检查，包括入学率，每日出勤率，留级率和成绩测试分数。此外，还将分析这些方案对家庭决策和学校组织的影响。此外，该项目还将研究这些项目的效果是否因学生的性别、社会经济地位、年龄或目前的学校表现而异。在幼儿园研究中，问题包括：（一）未经培训的教师在接受培训后是否改变了他们的育儿方法？2)当教师获得工资补贴时，他们的缺勤率是否会下降？3)在向教师提供工资补贴时，家长对学校的支持是增加还是减少？4)改善学前教育是否能通过减少小学留级而收回成本？ 对代金券计划的研究将审查以下问题：1）在哥伦比亚，有多少受代金券支持的学生在没有代金券计划的情况下会上学？2)有多少人上过私立学校？3)该计划对教育程度和认知成就有何影响？