scholarly journals Teacher Incentives and Student Performance: Evidence from Brazil

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-55
Author(s):  
Andrea Lépine

This paper provides evidence on a large-scale teacher incentive program in the state of São Paulo, Brazil, which awarded group bonuses to teachers and school staff conditional on improvements in student performance. By using a difference-in-differences (DD) and tripledifferences (DDD) framework with a series of alternative counterfactual groups, I show that the program had positive effects on student achievement up to seven years after the program implementation, although improvements vary across grades and subjects. While it could be expected that free-riding effects increase with the number of teachers in schools, limiting the impact of the program, this does not seem to be the case.

2019 ◽  
Vol 134 (3) ◽  
pp. 1627-1673 ◽  
Author(s):  
Isaac Mbiti ◽  
Karthik Muralidharan ◽  
Mauricio Romero ◽  
Youdi Schipper ◽  
Constantine Manda ◽  
...  

AbstractWe present results from a large-scale randomized experiment across 350 schools in Tanzania that studied the impact of providing schools with (i) unconditional grants, (ii) teacher incentives based on student performance, and (iii) both of the above. After two years, we find (i) no impact on student test scores from providing school grants, (ii) some evidence of positive effects from teacher incentives, and (iii) significant positive effects from providing both programs. Most important, we find strong evidence of complementarities between the programs, with the effect of joint provision being significantly greater than the sum of the individual effects. Our results suggest that combining spending on school inputs (the default policy) with improved teacher incentives could substantially increase the cost-effectiveness of public spending on education.


Kybernetes ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 49 (11) ◽  
pp. 2737-2753
Author(s):  
Hui Wang ◽  
Meiqing Zhang

Purpose The large-scale construction of China’s transportation infrastructure has driven the flow of elements between regions, which has provided convenient conditions for the accumulation of advantageous resources. Design/methodology/approach Based on the panel data of 31 provinces in China in the past 2003-2017 years, this paper applies the spatial econometric model and partial differential method and empirically analyzes the spatial spillover effect of transportation infrastructure on employment in the service industry under four spatial weighting matrices. Findings The results show that for every 1 per cent increase in the level of transportation infrastructure, the employment density of the service industry in the region can be increased by 0.1274 per cent. It is worth noting that roads promote the employment of the service industry more than railways and inland waterways. However, inland waterways have not shown positive effects. The results on spatial spillover of transportation infrastructure indicate that railway has obvious promotion effect on the employment level of service industry in the surrounding area, while the highway has hindered the effect. The spatial spillover effect of inland waterway is not obvious. Originality/value The value of this paper is to consider the impact of China’s transportation infrastructure on employment in a particular industry, especially in the service industry. The research will help to provide empirical evidence for policymakers. The government needs to invest and build transportation infrastructure based on the stage and development potential of the employment development of the regional service industry.


2016 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 54-76 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melinda Adnot ◽  
Thomas Dee ◽  
Veronica Katz ◽  
James Wyckoff

In practice, teacher turnover appears to have negative effects on school quality as measured by student performance. However, some simulations suggest that turnover can instead have large positive effects under a policy regime in which low-performing teachers can be accurately identified and replaced with more effective teachers. This study examines this question by evaluating the effects of teacher turnover on student achievement under IMPACT, the unique performance-assessment and incentive system in the District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS). Employing a quasi-experimental design based on data from the first years of IMPACT, we find that, on average, DCPS replaced teachers who left with teachers who increased student achievement by 0.08 standard deviation ( SD) in math. When we isolate the effects of lower-performing teachers who were induced to leave DCPS for poor performance, we find that student achievement improves by larger and statistically significant amounts (i.e., 0.14 SD in reading and 0.21 SD in math). In contrast, the effect of exits by teachers not sanctioned under IMPACT is typically negative but not statistically significant.


Author(s):  
Tatiana Zakharova

In 2000, Lauzon and Leahy completed a literature review on rural schools and educational reform, concluding that rural schools were indeed worth saving. In 2017, I conducted a literature review with the goal of offering an update to that article, investigating the post-2001 research on the impact of rural school closures; the effects of bussing of rural students to/from school; and student performance in small schools and mixed-grade classes. The results were mixed and contradictory, equal in their puzzling to the complexity of defining what is “rural” and what is “small school”. While some of the researchers continue to point out the unique place of local schools in rural settings, many also note the lack of large-scale studies into the impact of rural school closures, especially the impact on students – even "who pays and the price they pay, is always of interest" (bell hooks)… or is it?


Author(s):  
Rafael Goldszmidt ◽  
Patrick Behr ◽  
Cesar Zucco ◽  
Anna-Katharina Lenz ◽  
Lauro Gonzalez ◽  
...  

AbstractThis paper studies the impact of microcredit in Brazil. We use a propensity score matching on original primary data on business and personal outcomes to compare veteran clients of BNDES—Brazil’s largest government-owned development bank—to a matched sample of more recent clients. Based on administrative data as well as data from a survey of 2107 clients from the South and Northeast regions of Brazil, the findings show no significant impacts on income, employment generation, access to credit, and business formalization, except for the poorest Municipalities of the Northeast, where microcredit presented positive effects.


2021 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lukas Herrmann ◽  
Birgitte Lund Nielsen ◽  
Corina Aguilar-Raab

Social-emotional education and the relational competence of school staff and leaders are emphasized in research since they strongly impact childrens’ social, emotional, and cognitive development. In a longitudinal project—Empathie macht Schule (EmS)—we aim at evaluating the outcome and process of an empathy training for the whole school staff, including leaders. We compare three treatments to three control elementary schools via a mixed-methods approach employing qualitative and quantitative research methods targeting both, the school staff and the schoolchildren. Since the start of the project in 2019, the COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the global education process, that is, the range of training activities for school staff in an unprecedented manner. First the lockdown and then the hygienic measures impact the habits and certainties in schools on multiple levels, including artifacts (e.g., physical distancing measures and virtual platforms), processes (e.g., virtual learning and home-schooling), social structures (e.g., separation of a high-risk group), and values (e.g., difficulties in building relations and showing empathy due to physical distance). Leaders and staff are facing an uncertain situation, while their actions and decisions may—also unintentionally—shape the social reality that will be inhabited to a significant extent. In this context, a number of questions become salient. How does the disruption of the pandemic affect interpersonal relationships, interactions, and the social field—the sum of relationships within the system of a school—as a whole? And specifically, how do the actors reflect on changes in the social field, their relationships, and the schools’ and classrooms’ overall relationship quality due to the crisis? The assessment combines qualitative interviews with leaders and teachers (N = 10) along with a self-report survey (N = 80) addressing the effects of the pandemic on interpersonal aspects in schools. Surprisingly, a number of positive effects were mentioned regarding the learning environment in the smaller-sized classes, which were caused by hygienic measures, as well as increased cohesion among faculty. The potential influence of these effects by consciously shaping relationships and cultivating empathy is discussed in the article.


2014 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 143-159
Author(s):  
Mikkel Godsk

Abstract This article presents the experiences and results of using a simple learning design for transforming a traditional, large-scale, face-to-face science module in calculus into blended learning where all face-to-face lectures were replaced by webcasts and online activities. The article presents the impact on teaching and learning in terms of how the teacher and the students used the materials and the impact on the students’ performance and satisfaction. The article concludes that replacing face-to-face lectures with webcasts and online activities has the potential to improve learning in terms of a better student performance, higher student satisfaction, and a higher degree of flexibility for the students. In addition, the article discusses implications of using learning design for educational development, how learning design may help breaking with the perception that facilitating blended learning is a daunting process, and, ultimately, its potential for addressing some of the grand challenges in science education and the political agenda of today


Author(s):  
Pāvels Pestovs ◽  
Dace Namsone

Latvia is undergoing a nation-wide curriculum reform in general education, with an aim to help students to develop 21st century skills. In order to successfully implement reform, not only teacher performance in the classroom is important, but also the transformation of the school culture is of high priority. One of the key dimensions that is characteristic for a school as learning organization culture is whether it has data-driven culture and is using data on continuous basis to improve student achievement. Large scale national level assessment data is used for many different purposes, however, this data only rarely is recognised as useful data source for planning actions to improve student achievement at school level. Authors argue that in different grades average performance of students cannot be compared in a meaningful way to develop action plan and evaluate the impact of the initiatives at the school level. It is based on the issues rising from varying difficulty level of the tests and different skills, which are being assessed. The study design is based on in-depth analysis of items of large-scale national level assessment in mathematics, defining minimum level of competency of mathematics and calculating percentage of students in school with minimum level of competence in a cohort. This analysis is conveyed for the students of 3rd, 6th and 9th grade by using Rasch model, thus allowing to effectively monitor the student performance during the general education and use of data to make informed decisions.  


2014 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 120-154 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria D. Fitzpatrick ◽  
Michael F. Lovenheim

Early retirement incentives (ERIs) are increasingly prevalent in education as districts seek to close budget gaps by replacing expensive experienced teachers with lower cost newer teachers. Combined with the aging of the teacher workforce, these ERIs are likely to change the composition of teachers dramatically in the coming years. We use exogenous variation from an ERI program in Illinois in the mid-1990s to provide the first evidence in the literature of the effects of large-scale teacher retirements on student achievement. We find the program did not reduce test scores; likely, it increased them, with positive effects most pronounced in lower SES schools. (JEL H75, I21, I28, J26, J45)


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