How Can We Encourage Teachers to Improve the Skills of Low-Achieving Students? Experimental Evidence from Bangladesh

Researchers have argued that teachers in developing countries do not devote enough attention to low-achieving students primarily because they face incentives to focus on their high-achieving peers. Building on recent evidence from South Asia showing that primary- and middle-school teachers in South Asia overestimate their students' performance, this randomized evaluation aims to measure the impact of providing teachers with accurate information on their student's academic skills. The study has two treatment groups and one control group. Each group consists of 156 schools, totaling 468 schools. The schools in the treatment groups, 312 in total, will be handed over a report card immediately after baseline and midline data collection. Specifically, the business-as-usual control group will not receive any interventions; the external feedback group (T1) will receive two formative assessments administered by the research team and reports summarizing their results at baseline and midline, along with training for teachers on how to interpret the assessment results; and the internal feedback group (T2), will receive two formative assessments administered by teachers at baseline and midline, training for teachers on how to administer and interpret the written assessments and on how to administer one-on-one oral assessments to the three lowest-ranked students in the written assessments who are identified in the report cards. The study measures the impact on students' learning levels, teachers' instructional strategies, and the accuracy of teachers' beliefs at the endline.