Evaluating Multilingual Early Reading as the Groundwork for Education: A Cluster-Randomized Trial in Kenya

Abstract

We conduct a cluster-randomized evaluation of an early literacy intervention that provided Kenyan parents with illustrated children's storybooks and modified dialogic reading training. Rural communities were randomly assigned to treatment or control. Within treatment communities, households were further randomized to receive children's storybooks in either Luo (the mother tongue of all children in the sample) or English (a national language, and the primary language of instruction in grade 4 of primary school and beyond). We estimate the impacts of treatment on children's vocabulary and literacy skills. Our design also allows us to document household responses to the intervention including behavioral responses by parents and older siblings and overall impacts on parental time investments in children.