|
|
|
 |
 National Science
Foundation Award #0551333 |
 |
|
|
Education Production and Peer Networks Among Out-of-School Children in India |
| |
| Investigator(s): |
Leigh Linden (PI)
|
| Sponsor: |
Columbia University, NY 10027 2128546851
|
| Start Date/Expiration Date |
2006-05-01 to 2007-04-30 (amended 2006-04-12) |
| Awarded Amount to Date: |
$155,225 |
| Abstract: PROJECT SUMMARY
The PI proposes investigatomg the education production function in the context of an informal
community based model of instruction targeted at out-of-school children in India. Using the
planned expansion of the program, the PI will conduct a three part randomization that will
allow us to distinguish the effects of student, teacher, classmate, and non-class peers on student
achievement while also generally evaluating the effectiveness of community based class model.
The evaluation design comprises three randomizations. First, from one hundred communities we
will randomly choose sixty-six in which to provide the intervention. In the treatment
communities, the PI will randomly choose from the out-of-school children who indicate an interest
in the program a subset to receive the treatment. To generate variation in the coverage of
students peer networks, the PI will also varying the fraction of out of school children that will be treated in
these communities. Finally, the PI will randomly assign students to classes and teachers to classes
to allow measurement of the effects of teacher and classmate characteristics. The PI will track
interested children in 100 communities (6,000 children) for two years. Student performance will
be measured through tests, attendance rates, and subsequent enrollment rates.
Intellectual Merit of the Proposed Activity
The study will expand the understanding of the education production function in three ways.
First, the PI will contribute to the growing literature that employs randomized evaluations to estimate the
causal effects of educational interventions in the context of developing countries. The PI's estimates
taken in combination with the existing literature will expand understanding of how individual
institutional structures shape students experiences. For example, comparing the change in
student performance due untrained teachers through the Bridge Course program to the change in
student performance due to similar teachers operating in conjunction with normal school teachers
(Banerjee, Cole, Duflo and Linden, 2005) allows improved understanding of the relative effectiveness of
such teachers operating in different environments and with different populations of students.
To complement these global estimates, the PI also seeks to conduct micro-level analyses in which the PI
estimates more fundamental relationships underlying the education production function. Drawing
on the classic theoretical specifications of the education production function and the newer
models of peer effects, the PI directly estimates the effects of teacher, classmate, and non-class peer
characteristics on student learning. Finally, the PI investigates a richer set of characteristics than
have been previously investigated in the developing context. For example, the PI investigates the
influence of different types of peers by testing the effects of peers that have different
relationships to a child by surveying described levels of closeness, shared activities, etc.
Broader Impact of the Proposed Activity
The intervention the PI proposes to evaluate is extremely cheap (about $1.50 per student per month),
and operates completely outside of traditional administrative boundaries (schools, religious
institutions, etc.). If effective, it could provide a viable mechanism for educating the over 100
million primary-aged children in the developing world who are currently out of school. In
addition, the entire data set resulting from the proposed study will be made available to other
researchers once the PI has finished working with the data. |
|
| NSF Org: |
SES - Division of Social and Economic Sciences |
| Award Number: |
0551333 |
| Award Instrument: |
Continuing grant |
| Program Manager: |
Julia I. Lane
SES Division of Social and Economic Sciences
SBE Directorate for Social, Behavioral & Economic Sciences
|
| NSF Program(s): |
ECONOMICS |
| Field Application(s): |
Human Subjects |
| Program Reference Code(s): |
UNASSIGNED, 0000 |
| Program Element Code(s): |
1320 |
|
|
| |
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
