Working Paper: NBER ID: w17554
Authors: Paul W. Glewwe; Eric A. Hanushek; Sarah D. Humpage; Renato Ravina
Abstract: Developing countries spend hundreds of billions of dollars each year on schools, educational materials and teachers, but relatively little is known about how effective these expenditures are at increasing students' years of completed schooling and, more importantly, the skills that they learn while in school. This paper examines studies published between 1990 and 2010, in both the education literature and the economics literature, to investigate which specific school and teacher characteristics, if any, appear to have strong positive impacts on learning and time in school. Starting with over 9,000 studies, 79 are selected as being of sufficient quality. Then an even higher bar is set in terms of econometric methods used, leaving 43 "high quality" studies. Finally, results are also shown separately for 13 randomized trials. The estimated impacts on time in school and learning of most school and teacher characteristics are statistically insignificant, especially when the evidence is limited to the "high quality" studies. The few variables that do have significant effects - e.g. availability of desks, teacher knowledge of the subjects they teach, and teacher absence - are not particularly surprising and thus provide little guidance for future policies and programs.
Keywords: education; developing countries; school resources; educational outcomes
JEL Codes: H4; I25; J24; O15
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| availability of desks (J29) | student learning (A21) |
| teacher knowledge of subjects (A21) | student learning (A21) |
| teacher absence (J22) | time in school (I21) |
| availability of educational materials (I24) | student learning (A21) |
| presence of textbooks and pedagogical materials (A33) | student learning (A21) |
| teacher training (A29) | student learning (A21) |
| class size (C55) | student learning (A21) |