Working Paper: NBER ID: w28581
Authors: Samuel Berlinski; Matias Busso; Taryn Dinkelman; Claudia MartÃnez
Abstract: We conducted an experiment in low-income urban schools in Chile to test the effects and behavioral changes triggered by a program that sends attendance, grade, and classroom behavior information to parents via weekly and monthly text messages. Our 18-month intervention raised average math scores by 0.09 of a standard deviation and increased the share of students satisfying attendance requirements for grade promotion by 4.7 percentage points. Treatment effects were larger for students at higher risk of later grade retention and dropout. Our results demonstrate that communicating existing school information to parents frequently can shrink parent-school information gaps and improve school outcomes in a light-touch, scalable, and cost-effective way.
Keywords: education outcomes; text messages; parent-school communication
JEL Codes: D8; I25; N36
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| frequency of text messages sent to parents (L96) | parental engagement (I24) |
| parental engagement (I24) | student academic performance (I21) |
| frequency of text messages sent to parents (L96) | student academic performance (I21) |
| frequency of text messages sent to parents (L96) | math GPA (C68) |
| frequency of text messages sent to parents (L96) | probability of passing math (C12) |
| frequency of text messages sent to parents (L96) | attendance (I29) |
| frequency of text messages sent to parents (L96) | share of students satisfying attendance requirements (I24) |
| text messaging intervention (L96) | student outcomes (A21) |
| text messaging intervention (L96) | at-risk students (I24) |