Ali Protik

Staffing a Low-Performing School: Behavioral Responses to Selective Teacher Transfer Incentives.

We examine behavioral responses to an incentive program that offers high-performing teachers in ten school districts across the country

The Medium-Term Impacts of Girl-Friendly Schools: 7-Year Evidence from School Construction in Burkina Faso

20,000 to transfer into the districts hardest-to-staff schools. We discuss behavioral responses to the program on high-performing teachers’ willingness to transfer (supply) and the effect of the transfer offer on the internal dynamics of the receiving schools (demand). We found low take-up rates among the 1,514 high-performing teachers who were offered the incentive, with minimal sorting on observable characteristics. Within the new schools, transfer teachers were less likely than their counterparts in a randomized control group to require mentoring and more likely to provide mentoring themselves. No significant differences occurred in school climate, collegiality, or the way in which students were assigned to teachers, but evidence indicates that principals may have strategically assigned existing teachers to grades in both treatment and control schools in response to the quality of the incoming teachers.

Impact Evaluation of Burkina Faso's BRIGHT Program: Design Report

We evaluate the long-term effect of a “girl-friendly�? primary school program in Burkina Faso, using a regression discontinuity design. The intervention consisted of upgrading existing three-classroom schools to six-classroom schools to accommodate more grades. After seven years, the program increased enrollment by 15.5 percentage points and increased test scores by 0.29 standard deviations. Students in treatment schools progress further through the grades, compared to students in non-selected schools. These upgraded schools are effective at getting children into school, getting children to start school on time, and keeping children in school longer. Overall, we find that the schools sustain the large impacts observed about three years earlier, with enrollment declining slightly from 18.5 to 14.9 for the cohorts of children who were exposed to both the first and second phases of the intervention.