A few years ago, one of us (Abhijeet) wrote a cautionary note that the “standard deviation” measure in education evaluations in development economics was not typically comparable. That note was based on the informal observation that tests in development evaluations seemed to vary a lot from one stud...

While learners are at the heart of education, teachers are the main veins carrying blood to that heart. At the recent Comparative and International Education Society conference, I shared ten things—six I know and four I want to know—about supporting teachers to end the global learning crisis.

Last week I was just thinking about writing a blog about a new economics working paper, when I got access to the new Bing AI chatbot, trailed as yet another improvement on ChatGPT and with up to date internet access. It turns out Bing can write a very passable blog summary of a working paper recentl...

You’ve got an education program, and you’re confident that it’s having an impact. But is it worth the cost? How can you know, and how can you compare it to other education programs? Cost-effectiveness analysis tells you how much you pay for a given increase in student learning or student school part...

The state of learning in Malawi post-COVID-19 has been deemed a crisis, with primary school-aged learners unable to read basic text or perform foundational numeracy skills. In the first phase of our study, we found that students struggled to access remote learning during pandemic-related school clos...

Although African governments that deliver higher rates of primary enrollment enjoy greater approval ratings, the relative importance of access is likely to decline as countries approach universal primary education. That is already reflected in the prominence of learning outcomes as a predictor of ci...

Last year, I went zip lining. It invigorated my sense of how to approach the elusive pursuit of empowerment. Imagine climbing six stories to the top of a platform 65 feet up in the air, connecting yourself to a cable, and then jumping off to go zipping through tree tops at a speed of 35 miles an hou...