The authors report on a survey of primary public and private schools in rural Pakistan witha focus on student achievement as measured through test scores. Absolute learning is low compared with curricular standards and international norms. Tested at the end of the third grade, a bare majority...

Learning persistence plays a central role in models of skill formation, estimates of education production functions, and evaluations of educational programs. In non-experimental settings, estimated impacts of educational inputs can be highly sensitive to correctly specifying persistence when...

Evaluations of educational programs commonly assume that what children learn persists over time. The authors compare learning in Pakistani public and private schools using dynamic panel methods that account for three key empirical challenges to widely used value-added models: imperfect...

Learning persistence plays a central role in models of skill formation, estimates of education production functions, and evaluations of educational programs. In non-experimental settings, estimated impacts of educational inputs can be highly sensitive to correctly specifying persistence when...

This paper uses student answers to publicly released questions from an international testing agency together with statistical methods from Item Response Theory to place secondary students from two Indian states -Orissa and Rajasthan -on a worldwide distribution of mathematics achievement. These...

Increasing evidence suggests that the level and distribution of cognitive skills is more important to economic development than absolute measures of schooling attainment, and that income and skill inequality are inextricably linked. Yet for most of the developing world no internationally...

Evaluations of educational programs commonly assume that what children learn persists over time. The authors compare learning in Pakistani public and private schools using dynamic panel methods that account for three key empirical challenges to widely used value-added models: imperfect...

Evaluations of educational programs commonly assume that what children learn persists over time. The authors compare learning in Pakistani public and private schools using dynamic panel methods that account for three key empirical challenges to widely used value-added models: imperfect...

Bold assertions have been made in policy reports and popular articles on the high and increasing enrollment in Pakistani religious schools, commonly known as madrassas. Given the importance placed on the subject by policymakers in Pakistan and those internationally, it is troubling that none of...

Bold assertions have been made in policy reports and popular articles on the high and increasing enrollment in Pakistani religious schools, commonly known as madrassas. Given the importance placed on the subject by policy makers in Pakistan and those internationally, it is troubling that none of...