Working Paper: NBER ID: w22923
Authors: Karthik Muralidharan; Abhijeet Singh; Alejandro J. Ganimian
Abstract: We present experimental evidence on the impact of a personalized technology-aided after-school instruction program on learning outcomes. Our setting is middle-school grades in urban India, where a lottery provided winning students with a voucher to cover program costs. We find that lottery winners scored 0.36σ higher in math and 0.22σ higher in Hindi relative to lottery losers after just 4.5-months of access to the program. IV estimates suggest that attending the program for 90 days would increase math and Hindi test scores by 0.59σ and 0.36σ respectively. We find similar absolute test score gains for all students, but the relative gain was much greater for academically-weaker students because their rate of learning in the control group was close to zero. We show that the program was able to effectively cater to the very wide variation in student learning levels within a single grade by precisely targeting instruction to the level of student preparation. The program was cost effective, both in terms of productivity per dollar and unit of time. Our results suggest that well-designed technology-aided instruction programs can sharply improve productivity in delivering education.
Keywords: Technology-Aided Instruction; Education; Learning Outcomes; Randomized Controlled Trial; India
JEL Codes: C93; I21; O15
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| Attending the program for 90 days (I19) | Increase in math test scores (C12) |
| Attending the program for 90 days (I19) | Increase in Hindi test scores (C12) |
| Winning a voucher for the Mindspark program (I22) | Increase in test scores (I24) |
| Mindspark program (K24) | Higher value-added in math for treatment group (C92) |
| Mindspark program (K24) | Higher value-added in Hindi for treatment group (C29) |
| Mindspark program (K24) | Greater relative gains for academically weaker students (I24) |