Partnership Schools for Liberia: Impact on Accountability Mechanisms and Education Outcomes

利比里亚的公共教育体系奄奄一息。1999年至2003年的内战和2014年的埃博拉疫情使教育部几乎没有能力管理国家学校系统。从教育部工薪表中清除数千名幽灵教师的努力被中断（纽约时报，2016），尽管缺乏系统数据，但教师缺勤现象似乎很常见（Mulkeen, 2009）。近三分之二的小学适龄儿童没有上学，其中80%以上的儿童来自最贫穷的五分之一，使利比里亚成为世界净入学率最低的百分位数之一，在青年（15-24岁）识字率方面处于第七百分位数（EPDC， 2014年）。面对这些可怕的统计数据，利比里亚教育部于2016年初宣布，将把公立小学的运营承包给一群私营公司。这种公私伙伴关系的主要特点是(a)所有学校将继续对学生免费开放，(b)教师将从现有的教学队伍中选出工会公务员。我们提出了一项大规模的实地实验来研究这种新的利比里亚伙伴学校（PSL）的效果，将120所由私人运营商管理的学校与120所由政府管理的学校进行比较。随机现场实验将允许我们调查问责制的三个主要方面：（教师对私人经营者的）管理责任。利比里亚特许学校计划的一个核心假设是，有更大能力实施常规绩效管理系统、定期监测教师出勤情况、为教师提供频繁反馈和支持的私营经营者将有助于克服教师缺勤和教育质量低下的问题。这不是胡萝卜加大棒的问题。我们将测试私营经营者在没有权力解雇教师或以灵活合同聘用新教师的情况下产生问责制的能力。自下而上的问责制（教师和操作员对家长）。特许学校背后的一个潜在假设是，与传统公立学校相比，特许学校会对家长的要求做出更积极的反应，因为它们的资金直接与入学人数挂钩。我们将通过比较PSL和控制学校的学生转移（退出）和家长参与（声音）来验证这一点。自上而下的、基于结果的问责制（对教育部的私营经营者）。如果特许学校经营者没有达到某些预先设定的标准，即通常所说的基于结果的问责制，他们的合同可以被终止。PSL试点的第一年（2016/17）将缺乏任何正式的机制来让运营商对结果负责。这里正在研究的二年级扩展的一个主要创新和重点是，根据可衡量的学习成果，开发和测试不同形式的自上而下的问责制。该提案寻求对后续研究的支持，以跟踪PSL计划在运营的第二年和第三年（2017/18和2018/19）的长期影响，重点是可扩展性和可持续性。对第一年PSL试点（2016/17）的单独评估已经在进行中，并将在DFID-ESRC做出资金决定时接近完成。长期随访研究至关重要，原因如下。首先，重要的是要记录第一年取得的任何学习成果是否可以在更长的时间内保持。第二，第一年的试点项目得到了大量补贴，而且不成比例地集中在蒙罗维亚，而第二年和第三年将侧重于更具成本效益和可持续性的模式，包括在更偏远和服务不足的地区开办新学校。第三，在第2年和第3年，该项目将引入上述新的自上而下的基于结果的问责制措施，这是我们当前提案的主要重点。

Liberia's public education system is moribund. The civil war of 1999-2003 and the Ebola epidemic of 2014 have left the Ministry of Education with little capacity to run a national school system. An effort to clean thousands of ghost teachers from Ministry payrolls was cut short (New York Times, 2016), and while systematic data is scarce, teacher absenteeism appears common (Mulkeen, 2009). Nearly two-thirds of primary aged children are not in school, including over 80 percent of children in the poorest quintile, placing Liberia in the lowest percentile of net enrollment rates in the world, and at the 7th percentile in youth (15-24) literacy (EPDC, 2014).Faced with these dire statistics, the Liberian Ministry of Education announced in early 2016 that it would contract the operation of government primary schools to a group of private companies. Key features of this public-private partnership are that (a) all schools will remain free to students, and (b) teachers will be unionized civil servants, drawing from the existing teaching corps.We propose a large-scale field experiment to study the effect of this new Partnership Schools for Liberia (PSL), comparing 120 schools that have been delegated to management by private operators to 120 control schools under government management. The randomized field experiment will allow us to investigate three main aspects of accountability:1. Managerial accountability (of teachers to private operators). A central hypothesis underlying Liberia's charter school program is that private operators with greater capacity to implement routine performance management systems, regularly monitor teacher attendance, and provide teachers with frequent feedback and support will help to overcome teacher absenteeism and low education quality. This is not about carrots and sticks. We will test private operators' ability to generate accountability without authority to fire teachers or hire new teachers on flexible contracts.2. Bottom-up accountability (of teachers and operators to parents). An underlying hypothesis behind charter schools is that they will be more reactive to parents demands than traditional public schools because their funding is linked directly to enrollment numbers. We will test this by comparing student transfers (exit) and parental involvement (voice) in PSL and control schools.3. Top-down, results-based accountability (of private operators to the Ministry of Education). Charter school operators' contracts can be terminated if they do not achieve certain pre-established standards, commonly known as results-based accountability. The first year of the PSL pilot (2016/17) will lack any formal mechanism to hold operators accountable for results. A major innovation and focus of the year 2 expansion under study here is to develop and test different forms of top-down accountability based on measurable learning gains.This proposal seeks support for a follow-up study to track the longer-term effects of the PSL program in years two and three of operation (2017/18 and 2018/19) focused on scalability and sustainability. A separate evaluation of the first year PSL pilot (2016/17) is already underway and will be nearing completion when DFID-ESRC funding decisions are made. The longer-term follow-up study is of paramount importance for several reasons. First, it is important to document whether any learning gains achieved in year 1 can be maintained over a longer horizon. Second, the year 1 pilot has been heavily subsidized and disproportionately concentrated in Monrovia, whereas years 2 and 3 will focus on more cost-effective and sustainable models, including new schools in more remote and underserved areas. Third, in years 2 and 3 the program will introduce new top-down results-based accountability measures mentioned above, which are a major focus of our current proposal.