Tournament Incentives for Teachers: Evidence from a Scaled-Up Intervention in Chile

Contreras, Dante; Rau, Tomás

doi:10.1086/666955

Cited by 42 publications

(37 citation statements)

References 15 publications

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“…While global evidence on the effectiveness of teacher incentives is mixed, the patterns in the results suggest that such policies are more effective in developing countries, perhaps due to greater slack in teacher effort (Ganimian & Murnane, 2016). Our results are consistent with this view and with results from Lavy (2002Lavy ( , 2009); Glewwe, Ilias, and Kremer (2010); Muralidharan and Sundararaman (2011b); Duflo, Hanna, and Ryan (2012); Contreras and Rau (2012); and Muralidharan (2012) who find that various forms of performance-linked pay for teachers in low-and middle-income countries improved student test scores. 9 An important policy challenge for global development is that disadvantaged places also tend to be those with weaker governance.…”

Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 85%

Inputs, Incentives, and Complementarities in Education: Experimental Evidence from Tanzania

Mbiti

Muralidharan

Romero

et al. 2018

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We present results from a large-scale randomized experiment across 350 schools in Tanzania that studied the impact of providing schools with (a) unconditional grants, (b) teacher incentives based on student performance, and (c) both of the above. After two years, we find (a) no impact on student test scores from providing school grants, (b) some evidence of positive effects from teacher incentives, and (c) significant positive effects from providing both programs. Most importantly, we find strong evidence of complementarities between the two programs, with the effect of joint provision being significantly greater than the sum of the individual effects. Our results suggest that combining spending on school inputs (which is the default policy) with improved teacher incentives could substantially increase the cost-effectiveness of public spending on education.A randomized controlled trials registry entry is available at https://www.socialscienceregistry.org/trials/291 1 Some of these include poor student health and nutrition, low student attendance, mismatch between curriculum/pedagogy and student learning levels, and low levels of teacher effort and accountability. Each of these challenges has been extensively documented in multiple developing country settings. See Glewwe and Muralidharan (2016) and Mbiti (2016) for reviews and references to primary sources. 2 The Government's capitation grant policy aimed to provide schools with TZS 10,000/student. The program we study provided another TZS 10,000/student over and above this grant, effectively doubling the school grant. Since teacher salaries were paid directly by the government and did not pass through the schools, these grants (from the government and the program) were the main source of discretionary funding available to schools. Schools were not permitted to use grant funds to augment teacher salaries or hire new teachers (consistent with government rules for capitation grant expenditure). 1We conducted the experiment in a large nationally-representative sample of 350 public schools (and over 120,000 students) across 10 districts in mainland Tanzania. We randomly allocated schools to four groups (stratified by district): 70 received unconditional school grants, 70 received the teacher performance pay program, 70 received both programs, and 140 were assigned to a control group. The study was powered adequately to test for complementarities, and we gave the same importance to testing for complementarities as testing for the main effects of the two programs. 3 All programs were implemented by Twaweza, a leading Tanzanian non-profit organization.We report four sets of results. First, the school grant program significantly increased per-student discretionary expenditure in treated schools. We find evidence of reduction in school and household spending in the Grant schools. Even after this reduction, there was a significant increase in net discretionary school-level spending per student in treated schools (excluding teacher salaries). However, this increase in spend...

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Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 85%

Inputs, Incentives, and Complementarities in Education: Experimental Evidence from Tanzania

Mbiti

Muralidharan

Romero

et al. 2018

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“…In the case of quality control mechanisms, the results of the standardized tests have a direct impact on the schools because there is a set of public policies that assign rewards and sanctions mainly on the basis of those tests. For example, the SNED program gives greater weight to the SIMCE results when it identifies high performing schools compared to institutions with similar characteristics, which in turn determines the amount of the monetary compensation that is granted to teachers (Contreras and Rau, 2012).…”

Section: The Chilean School System: Incentives and The Role Of Standamentioning

confidence: 99%

Competition among schools and educational quality: Tension between various objectives of educational policy

Gajardo

Grau

2019

International Journal of Educational Development

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Using Chilean data for fourth grade students, this research studies the effect of competition among schools on the results of standardized tests, academic self-esteem and motivation, the climate within the school, civic participation and training, and healthy lifestyle habits. In order to address the potential bias due to the endogeneity of the competition among schools, an instrumental variable approach is implemented, using instruments associated with the size of each "educational market." The results show that an increase of one standard deviation in competition among schools generates a moderate increase in standardized test results (0.06 standard deviations) and a more significant decrease in the other indicators of quality (between 0.02 and 0.16 standard deviations). Therefore, the results suggest a tension in the school between various objectives of educational policy, in which pressure to improve standardized test scores resulting from competition among schools could produce an undesired effect of deterioration in other dimensions of quality.

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“…In Latin America, Contreras and Rau () evaluated a programme in Chile that provided bonus payments to teachers in public schools based on their students' test scores. This programme increased students' mathematics test scores by 0.29σ, a statistically significant effect.…”

Section: Analysis Of Interventions That Improve Learning Outcomesmentioning

confidence: 99%

What education policies and programmes affect learning and time in school in developing countries? A review of evaluations from 1990 to 2014

Damon

Glewwe

Wisniewski³

et al. 2018

Review of Education

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In this paper we provide a rigorous review of evaluations of education programmes in developing countries. This review is organised to provide guidance to policy-makers by identifying education interventions that are effective, sometimes effective, and not effective and by presenting some information on the cost effectiveness of different types of interventions. We distinguish between interventions' impacts on two types of outcomes: time in schools and learning as measured by test scores. Regarding children's time in school, we find that there are two effective, but admittedly relatively expensive, ways to increase enrolment and attendance: (1) Providing cash transfers conditional on attendance; and (2) Building new schools in communities where schools either do not exist or are far away. We have identified four interventions that have been shown to be effective at increasing test scores: (1) Merit-based student scholarships; (2) Teaching at the right level;(3) Decreasing pupil-teacher ratios; and (4) Building new schools.

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Tournament Incentives for Teachers: Evidence from a Scaled-Up Intervention in Chile

Cited by 42 publications

References 15 publications

Inputs, Incentives, and Complementarities in Education: Experimental Evidence from Tanzania

Inputs, Incentives, and Complementarities in Education: Experimental Evidence from Tanzania

Competition among schools and educational quality: Tension between various objectives of educational policy

What education policies and programmes affect learning and time in school in developing countries? A review of evaluations from 1990 to 2014

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