Governance, Decentralization, and Accountability

The purpose of this case study is to illuminate how and why US Agency for International Development (USAID) education programs in the West Bank and Gaza were able to achieve the lasting impact in basic, higher, and non-formal education despite the considerable political and environmental challenges. This study attempts to illuminate the pathways to sustained reform, the underlying reasons for the programs’ success, and the key lessons learned. It focuses far more on the how and why of program impact than on the “what” of program content.

Motivation is key to behavior change in teaching and learning processes. Motivated teachers are thought to be more likely to be willing to experiment with different instructional approaches in the classroom. Motivated students are hypothesized to put forth extra effort during learning activities. These assumptions posit that incentives, or rewards based on evidence of behavior change, may have a role to play in enhancing the motivation of teachers and students. This report presents findings from a short-term incentive pilot program conducted in one governorate in Jordan. During this pilot, students in treatment schools were offered a symbolic (non-monetary) incentive if they read at least 24 books at home over the 8-week implementation period. Teachers were offered a symbolic incentive if they received high scores from coaches during most (at least 50%) of their observed classroom lessons. This report presents findings from this pilot program.

This document is based on the structure of previous education profiles that traditionally use Demographic and Household Survey (DHS) data to characterize children’s participation in primary and secondary schooling and adults’ schooling attainment and literacy. Previously, these standardized profiles were used for cross-country comparisons. However, in the context of Nigeria, past DHS data, combined with the 2015 NEDS, allows a longitudinal perspective of the same indicators. The 2015 NEDS profile also provides more information than previous profiles on the mechanisms used to sample, collect, and analyze the household data and should be used as a reference for the national and 37 state/Federal Capital Territory reports that provide graphical representation of the data.

This report summarizes the results from a three-month pilot research activity in Kaolack, Senegal designed to test whether communications techniques can bring about changes in family members’ knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors related to their children learning to read. At the end of three months, family members in Kaolack demonstrated strong recall of the main messages of the campaign and were much more likely than control families to espouse beliefs supportive of their children learning to read.

This study examines why some districts performed better than others in implementing their Teacher Deployment Plans. The TDP engaged selected districts to analyze data to quantify and qualify their teacher deployment issue, to identify the means by which they could address their teacher deployment issue—merging schools, creating multi-grade schools, transferring teachers, recruiting teachers, and/or reassigning teachers—and to help them develop a detailed TDP plan that, when implemented, would address the teacher deployment issue. This study examines why some districts performed better than others in implementing their TDP plans.