The Kenya Big Data Activity is an operations research study to help the Kenya Ministry of Education, Science, and Technology (MoEST) identify the challenges, opportunities, and capacity requirements for implementing a school-based digital Education Management Information System (EMIS) at scale and sustainably. This activity was funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development’s Task Order 19, Data for Educational Research and Planning (DERP) in Africa, under the Education Data for Decision Making (EdData II) program. RTI International, in partnership with IBM Corp. Research Laboratory, Kenya and Digital Divide Data, implemented the study, the MoEST coordinated the effort, and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and other development partners provided collaboration and support.

This article points out the increase in RCT's for impact evaluation, and reports on a recent conference at the Center for Global Development to take stock of RCTs in development. The article mentions the RCTs in Kenya's Tusome program that have been influential because of collaboration with local governments.

This is a recording of a webinar delivered through the Global Numeracy Community of Practice. The Tayari Program is charged with developing a tested, cost-effective and scalable model of early childhood education (ECE). It is currently being piloted in ECD centers in Kenya, targeting 4-6 year-old children. Tayari includes classroom materials for teachers and students, teacher training and ongoing in-classroom support, and a health component. In this webinar, we will focus on the mathematics classroom materials, and illustrate the collaborative process of developing teacher guides and student activity books that are aligned to the Kenyan ECD Syllabus. We will share our process of creating materials beginning with identifying core skills and aligning these skills to the Kenyan ECD Syllabus, defining our scope and sequence, creating developmentally appropriate activities for maths, and designing the teacher’s guide for ease of use by teachers.

From the CGD Website on the event: "Please join the Center for Global Development (CGD) and the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) to take stock of the evidence and impact evaluation movement and its promise for improving social policy in developing countries. In 2006, CGD released a working group report titled “When Will We Ever Learn? Improving Lives Through Impact Evaluation.” It described an evaluation gap and proposed an international effort to systematically build evidence on “what works” in development with the aim of improving the effectiveness of social programs. Ten years later, we will reflect on progress toward these goals. Despite a host of challenges, hundreds of millions of people across the world have benefited from programs that have been rigorously evaluated and scaled up. Impact evaluation has generated knowledge about poverty and public policy leading to better programs. At the event, policymakers and evaluators will discuss examples of how evaluation has helped enhance effectiveness, and a panel of evaluation funders will reflect on lessons learned and the way forward. In a time of political transition, we seek to re-energize the movement for increased evidence and value for money in public and aid spending. Among others, the event will feature: Abhijit Banerjee (MIT), Amanda Glassman (CGD), Rachel Glennerster (J-PAL), Markus Goldstein (World Bank), Amber Gove (RTI International), Rema Hanna (Harvard), Emannuel Jimenez (3ie), Michael Kremer (Harvard), Darius Mogaka (Government of Kenya), Santhosh Mathew (Government of India), William Savedoff (CGD), and Bambang Widianto (Government of Indonesia)." Download the presentation slides from the Kenya case study using the "Download" link, or click on the external website link for more information on the event.

Article published in the International Journal of Education and Development, Volume 50. From Journal abstract: "Initial access to school is nearly universal in Kenya, but many children who enroll drop out before completing primary school. In this mixed-methods study, we use quantitative data from a randomized control trial involving 2666 upper primary-grade students, as well as qualitative data from interviews with 41 schoolchildren, dropouts, and parents, to examine dropout. Poorer baseline performance on literacy and numeracy assessments predicted a higher risk of dropout. Interviews revealed that children are the primary decision-makers rather than parents. Together, these findings suggest that school quality interventions may be an effective means of reducing primary school dropout in this region."

In response to the growing need to improve learning outcomes, USAID's 2011 Education Strategy focused on improving the teaching and learning of reading in early grades. Its goal of 100 million children showing improved reading skills testified to USAID’s commitment to investing in and measuring improvements in learning outcomes. As a result, USAID education programs with a focus on early grade reading have become the norm, with such programs implemented in approximately 20 countries during the five years since the adoption of the education strategy. In the last couple of years, the lessons of successful pilots are being applied on increasing scale in numerous countries. Taking successful pilot projects to scale and helping education systems implement their national reading strategies at scale have therefore become the primary challenges faced by USAID and other supporters of educational improvement in the developing world. The challenges of realizing large-scale impact, and of seeing that impact sustained, are not new to development. However, they are being approached with renewed interest and attention in the education sector. This paper examines seven countries where interventions to improve early grade reading are being taken to scale - some with project support, some through government initiative. Management Systems International's framework for taking projects to scale, and the framework defined in the Brookings Institute's Millions Learning report are used to examine how scale has been and is occurring in these selected countries.

This report describes the baseline findings of an external evaluation of the Tayari pre-primary school programme. Tayari is an early childhood development and education intervention funded by the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF). The intervention is implemented by the RTI International, in partnership with the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (MoEST), and in collaboration with four counties.

This article that appeared in The Economist (online and print editions) refers to work that RTI implements on behalf of USAID/Kenya for the Tayari project, as well as research that appeared in the Journal "The Lancet". See "related resources".

Article published in Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness. Published abstract: We evaluated a program to improve literacy instruction on the Kenyan coast using training workshops, semiscripted lesson plans, and weekly text-message support for teachers to understand its impact on students’ literacy outcomes and on the classroom practices leading to those outcomes. The evaluation ran from the beginning of Grade 1 to the end of Grade 2 in 51 government primary schools chosen at random, with 50 schools acting as controls. The intervention had an impact on classroom practices with effect sizes from 0.57 to 1.15. There was more instruction with written text and more focus on letters and sounds. There was a positive impact on three of four primary measures of children’s literacy after two years, with effect sizes up to 0.64, and school dropout reduced from 5.3% to 2.1%. This approach to literacy instruction is sustainable, and affordable and a similar approach has subsequently been adopted nationally in Kenya.

This article reviews the development of the EGRA and EGMA, which are locally tailored, timely assessments designed to directly inform policy and instruction for learning improvement, particularly for countries on the lower end of the income spectrum. The history of the design and implementation of the tools as well as case studies of their use in Egypt and Kenya, are a useful counterbalance to the experience of the more traditional international large-scale assessments (ILSAs) documented in this special issue—in particular for understanding the needs of countries struggling to transform ‘education for all’ into ‘learning for all’.