Working Paper: NBER ID: w24911
Authors: Daniel O. Gilligan; Naureen Karachiwalla; Ibrahim Kasirye; Adrienne M. Lucas; Derek Neal
Abstract: In low-income countries, educators often encourage weak primary students to drop out before reaching the end of primary school in order to avoid the negative attention they receive when their students perform poorly on primary leaving exams. We conducted an experiment in rural Uganda that sought to reduce dropout rates in grade six and seven by rewarding teachers for the performance of each of their students. Teachers responded to this Pay for Percentile (PFP) incentive system in ways that raised attendance rates two school years later from .56 to .60. These attendance gains were driven primarily by outcomes in treatment schools that provide textbooks for grade six math students, where two-year attendance rates rose from .57 to .64. In these same schools, students whose initial skills levels prepared them to use grade six math texts enjoyed significant gains in math achievement. We find little evidence that PFP improved attendance or achievement in schools without books even though PFP had the same impact on reported teacher effort in schools with and without books. We document several results that are consistent with the hypothesis that teacher effort and books are complements in education production.
Keywords: educator incentives; educational triage; primary education; Uganda; performance pay
JEL Codes: I00; I30; I21
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| PFP treatment (Z28) | increased student attendance rates (I24) |
| PFP treatment (Z28) | increased student attendance rates in schools with textbooks (A21) |
| PFP treatment (Z28) | improved math achievement (I24) |
| initial skill levels (J24) | improved math achievement (I24) |
| PFP treatment (Z28) | raised likelihood of completing primary education on time (I24) |
| PFP treatment (Z28) | raised likelihood of taking the primary leaving exam (PLE) (A21) |
| teacher effort and textbooks (A33) | increased effectiveness of teacher incentives (A21) |
| PFP treatment (Z28) | null effects in schools without books (I20) |