Can Outsourcing Improve Liberia's Schools? Preliminary Results from Year One of a Three-Year Randomized Evaluation of Partnership Schools for Liberia

Romero, Mauricio; Sandefur, Justin; Sandholtz, Wayne Aaron

doi:10.2139/ssrn.3062941

Cited by 21 publications

(21 citation statements)

References 64 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…The three-year randomised control trial, conducted by an independent entity, shows encouraging preliminary (year-one) results (Romero, Sandefur & Sandholtz, 2017). Students in LEAP schools learned 60 per cent more than the students in non-LEAP schools, student attendance improved by 10 per cent and teachers were 20 per cent more likely to be in school than their counterparts elsewhere.…”

Section: Liberian Education Advancement Program (Leap)mentioning

confidence: 98%

Tackling the global education crisis: the UBS Optimus Foundation’s use of social finance

Ziswiler¹,

Terway²

2019

Philanthropy in Education

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Section: Liberian Education Advancement Program (Leap)mentioning

confidence: 98%

Tackling the global education crisis: the UBS Optimus Foundation’s use of social finance

Ziswiler¹,

Terway²

2019

Philanthropy in Education

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

“…There is a recent prominent example, in Liberia, of a more radical experiment to improve quality by outsourcing delivery of schools to the private sector (Romero et al, 2017). An evaluation after one year noted that children in the private schools had done better than those in the public schools, but questioned if these gains could be maintained at scale without changes in the model.…”

Section: Private Schoolsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Tracing the Consequences of Child Poverty

Boyden¹,

Dawes²,

Dornan³

et al. 2019

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

What matters most in how poverty shapes children's wellbeing and development? How can data inform social policy and practice approaches to improving the outcomes for poorer children? Using life course analysis from the Young Lives study of 12,000 children growing up in Ethiopia, India, Peru, and Vietnam over the past 15 years, this book draws on evidence from two cohorts of children, from 1 to 15 years old and from 8 to 22 years old. It examines how poverty affects children's development in low- and middle-income countries, and how policy has been used to improve their lives, then goes on to show when key developmental differences occur. The book uses new evidence to develop a framework of what matters most and when, and outlines effective policy approaches to inform the no-one left behind Sustainable Development Goal agenda.

show abstract

“…Under the outsourcing scheme, school admission is free, PSL teachers are paid by the government, and contractors cannot screen students by ability or other characteristics. Romero, Sandefur, and Sandholtz (2017) conducted a randomized evaluation of the project and found that contracted schools performed significantly better than regular public schools one year after the intervention, with higher teacher attendance and better student performance in English and math. However, one provider, Bridge International Academies, pushed excess students and worse-performing teachers to government-run schools, subverting policymakers' efforts to maximize access to quality education.…”

Section: A Role For the Domestic Private Sectormentioning

confidence: 99%

Ending Global Poverty: Why Money Isn’t Enough

Page

Pande²

2018

Journal of Economic Perspectives

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Between 1981 and 2013, the share of the global population living in extreme poverty fell by 34 percentage points. This paper argues that such rapid reductions will become increasingly hard to achieve for two reasons. First, the majority of the poor now live in middle-income countries where the benefits of growth have often been distributed selectively and unequally. Second, a reservoir of extreme poverty remains in low-income countries where growth is erratic and aid often fails to reach the poor. If the international community is to most effectively leverage available resources to end extreme poverty, it must ensure that its investments in institutions and physical infrastructure actually provide the poor the capabilities they need to craft an effective pathway out of poverty. We term the human and social systems that are required to form this pathway “invisible infrastructure” and argue that an effective domestic state is central to building this. By corollary, ending extreme poverty will require both expanding state capacity and giving the poor power to demand reforms they need by solving agency problems between citizens, politicians, and bureaucrats.

show abstract

Can Outsourcing Improve Liberia's Schools? Preliminary Results from Year One of a Three-Year Randomized Evaluation of Partnership Schools for Liberia

Cited by 21 publications

References 64 publications

Tackling the global education crisis: the UBS Optimus Foundation’s use of social finance

Tackling the global education crisis: the UBS Optimus Foundation’s use of social finance

Tracing the Consequences of Child Poverty

Ending Global Poverty: Why Money Isn’t Enough

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About