You’ve seen the headline; indeed, you’ve probably seen it from us. According to widely cited estimates, about one in three children around the world are lead-poisoned, or about 800 million total. This means that they have blood-lead levels exceeding 5 micrograms per deciliter, a common reference lev...

Girls today are getting more education than ever before. But many girls are still being left behind. How can societies ensure they go the last mile when it comes to guaranteeing all girls have access to primary school, or the last hundred miles when it comes to quality education and access to second...

Many cost-effective education programs suffer implementation failures and political resistance when scaled up in government systems. But not all.

Suppose you’re the minister of education in a lower-middle income country. It’s budget season. You have a meeting tomorrow with the finance minister to make your case for more education spending. You know she’s skeptical that money is really what’s holding your school system back. The World Bank say...

Has the Modi government accelerated or decelerated poverty reduction? It’s hard to know, as India has effectively stopped measuring poverty. A new World Bank paper using private-sector survey data finds the share of people living below $1.90 per day has been falling, but is higher than we thought, a...

A couple weeks ago, Uganda finally ended the longest national school closure on record, reopening its public schools after nearly two full years. One might anticipate a fairly dramatic decline in learning levels. Indeed, in a very non-scientific poll of my twitter followers, the dominant view was th...

Despite global and regional commitments to ensure that all children have access to education, refugee children are being left behind. Refugee enrollment in secondary school lags behind host community children in nearly all major host countries, with gaps often more severe for girls.