School Choice National Conference

New Delhi, 20 December 2013

Karthik MuralidharanUniversity of California San Diego

Implementing Clause 12 of the RtE to Full Potential: Research Findings and Policy Implications

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RtE Clause 12

• What is it: 25% reservation in all private schools for students from Economically Weaker Sections (EWS)• Govt. will reimburse lower of private school fees/per-child spending in Govt. Schools

• Two main implications if implemented in this spirit

• 1) A substantial increase in the share of students attending private schools and paid for by public funds

• 2) A significant reduction in socio-economic stratification in schools

• Both parts are highly controversial (but very little evidence on impacts of either component)

• Arbitrary and haphazard implementation across states

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AP School Choice Project: Research Questions

• What changes do voucher-winning (EWS) students experience when they switch to attending a private school? • Schools, teachers, households

• What is the impact of providing economically disadvantaged students with a voucher to attend a private school in rural India?• Are private schools more effective (productive) than government-run schools

in rural India (both absolute and cost-adjusted)?

• How does the impact of the program vary by:• Individual, school, and market characteristics

• Are there spillover effects on:• Students left behind in the public schools?• Students who start out in the private schools to begin with?

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Best-Practice Experimental Design (To

Date)

Group 1 Group 2 Group 3 Group 4

Non-Applicants in Public Schools

Applicants in Public Schools NOT awarded a

Voucher

Applicants in Public Schools AWARDED a

Voucher

Non-voucher students in

private schools

Typical Experimental Design for School Choice Studies

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Experimental Design of AP School Choice Project

Group 1T Group 2T Group 3T Group 4T

Non-Applicants in Public Schools

Applicants in Public Schools NOT awarded a

Voucher

Applicants in Public Schools AWARDED a

Voucher

Non-voucher students in

private schools

Treatment Villages

Group 1C Group 2C Group 3C Group 4C

Non-Applicants in Public Schools

Applicants in Public Schools NOT awarded a

Voucher

Does not existNon-voucher students in

private schools

Control Villages

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Summary of Results (1 of 2)

• Private schools are poorer on measures of input-quality, but much better on measures of school processes• Teachers have lower levels of education, training, experience, salaries• But have much better measures of effort (absence, active teaching, etc)• Private schools also have a longer school day and year, lower pupil-teacher

ratio, and better school hygiene• No significant change in household inputs – school time goes up, but time

spent on homework does not (so changes likely to be due to school)

• No test-score impact on two main subjects (Math/Telugu)• Natural inference is that private schools are not more effective• But private schools spend much less instructional time on Math/Telugu• Use extra time to teach more English, Hindi, Science, Social Studies• Positive point estimates on all of these (large and significant for Hindi)• Positive and significant “combined” effects (ITT: 0.13 SD; ToT: 0.23 SD)• Can clearly infer that the private schools are more productive (but arguably

not more ‘effective’ in improving basic competencies)

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Summary of Results (2 of 2)

• Heterogeneous effects (student, school, market)• No heterogeneity by student characteristics• Suggestive evidence of important heterogeneity by medium of instruction

• Students switching to Telugu-medium private schools do better than those switching to English-medium ones (on Maths/Telugu/EVS)

• Private school productivity may be even higher without disrupting medium• But, these estimates are less precise (instrumental-variable estimates)

• Some evidence of positive effects of greater choice/competition

• No evidence of spillovers on either non-applicants or students who start out in private schools• Particularly important in the context of RtE

• Private schools are substantially more productive • Cost ~30% of public schools on average; voucher value is ~40%• Fundamental drivers are teacher salaries and accountability• But, additional productivity is not used to improve math/native language

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Implications for Public Vs. Private Debate

• Notes of caution for the pro-private wallahs:• Private schools did NOT do better at value addition than Govt. Schools

(suggesting that most of the observed differences are due to SEC factors)• They DO work harder, but the binding constraint may be somewhere else • Very little culture of learning and even harder to disseminate (too fragmented)• Parental choices may be sub-optimal (feedback loop is too long)

• Notes of caution for the pro-public wallahs:• Qualification is NOT quality – effort/monitoring/governance REALLY matter• Private is able to achieve similar outcomes at one-third the cost!• What could private management achieve with the same level of spending?

• Need to get away from “public” vs. “private” debates (too simplistic) and move on to discussing the design of education “systems” that:• Leverage the strengths of both public and private while mitigating against the

weaknesses of the other – while paying attention to cost effectiveness• System design really matters – a Nobel Prize was just given for this!

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RtE Clause 12 is a Great Opportunity

• The RtE Clause 12 Provision on reservation for students from EWS in private schools (with fees to be reimbursed by the government) could be a rare example of a policy that improves equity and efficiency and also does so at a lower cost than the status quo!• We find (very slight) test score gains for government-school

students who attended private schools • At no cost to students who were already enrolled in the private

schools, and potential improvements in attitudes and empathy of advantaged students toward EW peers (Rao 2013)

• Reimbursements to Private Schools are capped at per-student spending in Govt. Schools

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But needs to be Implemented Carefully

and Well• Clause 12 is a real opportunity to improve both equity and

efficiency, but substantial efforts need to be made to implement this in a transparent and systematic way• Lots of theory/evidence to suggest that the potential benefits from

implementing Clause 12 will be lost if private schools are allowed to cherry pick students from within the EWS section

• Default view seems to be that compliance with Clause 12 is a ‘school-level’ issue and that every school should individually fulfill its responsibilities to reserve 25% places for EWS children

• This is a recipe for cherry-picking, favoritism, and other irregularities (lots of anecdotes to suggest that this is becoming another vehicle for rent-seeking)

• It is essential that implementation be seen as a ‘system’ level issue and not a ‘school’ level one and Clause 12 should be implemented by the government in a coordinated way at the city, block, or district level

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Outline of an Implementation Roadmap

• I will soon write a note on a model implementation protocol for Clause 12 of the RtE, but the basic idea consists of just 3 steps:• Require all private schools to provide audited enrollment and fee (all

inclusive) data to the govt. (that will determine both the number of places under the quota and the rate of reimbursement)

• EWS parents (eligibility determined and verified by the Government and not by the schools) rank schools (private and government) as per their preference ordering

• A lottery is conducted whereby each EWS applicant gets a lottery rank and EWS quota spots in schools are filled as per the precedence ordering established by the lottery rank

• This process will resemble college counseling/admissions, with the only difference being that the ‘merit list’ is determined by lottery• A unique ID will have to be established for each student/school to help

document the school that is being attended (and to avoid duplication), with electronic monthly transfer of fees to schools.

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Principles of Regulation of Private Schools

• Regulation/recognition of private schools should be based on requiring full disclosure and transparency on all metrics needed for parents to make informed choices, but not on input mandates

• The evidence from multiple studies clearly shows that qualification is NOT quality – rather “Quality = Knowledge x Effort”• Our evidence suggests that private schools are able to make up for lower

formal qualifications of teachers with greater time on task, and effort, and significantly smaller PTR’s (enabled by lower salaries)

• It is NOT the case that qualifications cannot be valuable, but they are neither necessary nor sufficient markers of quality. • So it is good to require full (and audited) disclosure of all inputs (including

teacher qualifications and experience) • But it does not make sense to mandate qualifications or to shut down

schools for not meeting mandates that are poor predictors of quality

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Making the Most of the Opportunity of RtE Clause

12• Low-cost private schools are delivering (slightly) better quality of

education at much lower costs, and account for an increasing market share of primary education in South Asia (~35%)• But the absolute quality is still pretty low

• Need to think seriously about effective ways of improving the quality of education provided by low-cost private schools

• Challenges include:• Do we know what actually works/makes sense to do in these schools?• Highly fragmented space – how do you achieve impact at scale?• Maybe things are efficient in that private schools are investing optimally in what their

market can afford? • Hopefully – proper implementation of Clause 12 provides the predictable funding

that will enable a supply-side response that can invest in quality• Key question is: How effective can private schools be with the same amount of

funding per student? Critical open question for research.

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Proposed Future Action and Research Agenda

• Critical areas for investment and focus by governments, non-profits, and civil-society• Supporting center/states/citizens in effective implementation of

Clause 12 (and flagging unsound sets of rules)• Supporting development and evaluation of cost-effective

pedagogies (too little innovation here)• Supporting better understanding and functioning of

choice/markets (supply side response to Clause 12)

• Launch a multi-site, multi-year research initiative alongside rollout of Clause 12