AEA RC T Registr y

The American Economic Association's registry for randomized controlled trials

There is mounting evidence suggesting that there is considerable heterogeneity in student preparation in primary schools in India. The largest education non-profit in India, Pratham, developed a pedagogical approach called "Teaching at the Right Level" (TaRL) that provides differentiated instruction to primary schoolchildren to address heterogeneity in preparation. However, persuading teachers to change business-as-usual instruction to incorporate this--or any other--method of differentiated instruction is challenging. Therefore, it seems worth understanding whether making the results of the assessments of basic reading and arithmetic skills more salient to teachers, and signaling the government’s commitment to improving these results, would encourage teachers to adopt TaRL on their own during school hours. We plan to randomly assign 200 public primary schools in the Indian state of Karnataka to: (a) a "control" group that would implement TaRL and receive no additional interventions; or (b) a "treatment" group that would also implement TaRL and receive periodic school report cards with results from student assessments of basic reading and arithmetic skills, accompanied by a letter from a high-level government official communicating the importance of improving those results. The study would focus on schoolchildren in grades 4 and 5, where TaRL has been found to be most effective.