Slow down, you’re going too fast: Matching curricula to student skill levels

Pritchett, Lant; Beatty, Amanda

doi:10.1016/j.ijedudev.2014.11.013

Cited by 96 publications

(68 citation statements)

References 23 publications

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“…The insights from this paper are relevant for various strands of the wider literature. In light of the large debate about whether the worldwide increase in schooling is leading to measurable and sustained gains in learning (Pritchett and Beatty, 2015), having widely comparable measures of cognitive abilities, that can be measured for adults, outside of the classroom, and in a variety of settings, is arguably key. Certain large data collection efforts covering wide and heterogeneous populations, such as the Young Lives Surveys or the World Bank STEPS surveys (Pierre et al, 2014), are now including measures for noncognitive abilities and personality traits.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Measuring Skills in Developing Countries

Laajaj

Macours

2019

J. Human Resources

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Measures of cognitive, noncognitive, and technical skills are increasingly used in developing country surveys, but have mostly been validated in high-income countries. We use a survey experiment in Western Kenya to test the reliability and validity of commonly used skills measures. Cognitive skills measures are found to be reliable and internally consistent, technical skills are very noisy, and measurement error in noncognitive skills is found to be non-classical. Addressing both random and systematic measurement error using common psychometric practices and repeated measures leads to some improvements and clearer predictions, though concerns remain. These findings hold for a replication in Colombia. JEL codes: O12, O13, O15The data and programs for full replication are available online at https://www.laajaj.com/research 1 Jack Pfeiffer provided invaluable research assistance and programming skills, field support, tenacity and ideas throughout the project and we gratefully acknowledge all his contributions to this project. provided excellent research assistance. Data collection was organized through IPA Kenya and S.E.I. in Colombia and we acknowledge the excellent field teams for key contributions during piloting and translation and for all efforts during the data collection. We are indebted to Chris Soto for many suggestions and insights from the psychometric literature. This open access article is distributed under the terms of the CC-BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0) and is freely available online at: http://jhr.uwpress.org 2 Hence we broadly follow the distinction of Heckman and Kautz (2012) who distinguish between cognitive abilities, personality traits, and other acquired skills. Jones and Kondylis (2018) is a recent example using a measure of acquired agricultural skills, in which measurement error is being discussed as potential reason for lack of impact. 3 Measures of risk aversion and time preferences, which have a longer history of use in developing country surveys, have received more scrutiny. Chuang and Schechter (2015) review the evidence, including their stability over time. 4 While explanatory factor analysis is used elsewhere in the economics literature on skills Heckman, Stixrud and Urzua, 2006), we also build on insights from the psychometrics literature, such as for the corrections for acquiescence bias (the tendency to agree even when statements are contradictory, or "yea-saying"). 5 Following McKenzie (2012), in order to reduce the noise in the outcome variables, the measures of yield and practices are obtained from the average over the four seasons that followed the collection of skills data.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Measuring Skills in Developing Countries

Laajaj

Macours

2019

J. Human Resources

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“…There are cases of non‐existent schools and ‘ghost’ students ( The Economist, ). Moreover, the pace and rigidity of the curriculum may also be important contributory factors for the low level of learning in countries like Afghanistan (Pritchett & Beatty, ).…”

Section: Conclusion and Policy Implicationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Enrolling girls without learning: Evidence from public schools in Afghanistan

Asadullah

Alim

Hossain³

2019

Development Policy Review

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While more girls are now attending school in Afghanistan than prior to 2010, there is a lack of evidence on how school attendance is helping their cognitive development. We use data from a large sample of all-girls state-funded school students to estimate for the first time the "learning profile" for Afghanistan. Students enrolled in grades 4 to 9 were assessed using the Early Grade Reading Assessment (EGRA) and the Early Grade Mathematics Assessment (EGMA) test items.We find that higher grade progression (particularly in grades 6-9) leads to almost no gain in numeracy (addition and subtraction) skills that should have been achieved in early grades.Similar results follow from the analysis of student performance in the EGRA test, particularly in oral reading fluency (correct words read per minute) and oral reading comprehension (number of correct answers out of 12). These findings warn that simply enrolling girls in school without improving the relationship between grade completion and learning is unlikely to transform the lives of women in Afghanistan. K E Y W O R D SAfghanistan, cognitive ability, gender inequality, school quality

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“…Poor learning levels are apparent from the very first years of school: for example, in third grade 58% of children are still unable to read a Grade 1 level text (ASER Centre 2017).Keeping up with the curriculum right from the start is important: only around one in 10 children who lack basic literacy or numeracy skills are able to acquire them after an additional year of schooling (Bhattacharjea, Banerji, and Wadhwa 2011;Educational Initiatives 2010;Pritchett and Beatty 2015), and the gap between curriculum expectations and children's abilities only widens over time. The importance of the early years is further corroborated by the fact that dropout rates in India have been higher in Grades 1 and 2 than in later primary school grades (Mehta 2007;Reddy and Sinha 2010), indicating the precariousness of the transition from home/preschool to Grades 1 and 2.…”

Section: Prior Evidence On Early Childhood Education In Indiamentioning

confidence: 99%