Educate Girls is an NGO based in Mumbai, Maharashtra, India. A large part of its mission is to further educational opportunities and outcomes for girls. In light of this, they have arranged for supplemental school instruction for children in grades 3 through 5 in the state of Rajasthan, India, called Community Learning Teams.
The Creative Learning and Teaching (CLT) program works as follows. At the beginning of the academic year, the organization recruits and trains members of the CLT in each village. Initially, these individuals subject students to tests in three subjects: (1) English, (2) Hindi, and (3) mathematics. Based upon the results of these tests (which are scored on a 1-5 scale), pupils receive targeted, regular instruction based upon their ability level. At the end of the year, all students take a final test. Past results suggest that test scores increase substantially throughout a given school year for students at all levels of the ability distribution.
In order to assess the effectiveness of the CLT program, we randomly chose 100 villages in Jalore district. These villages were then placed into treatment and control groups via stratified random sampling. Schools in the 50 treatment villages received the CLT program, while those in the 50 control villages did not. We intend to use the randomized design to assess the program's impact on a variety of outcomes, including test scores, school attendance, and enrollment in subsequent years.
External Link(s)
Citation
Delavallade, Clara, Alan Griffith and Rebecca Thornton. 2015. "Creative Learning and Teaching evaluation." AEA RCT Registry. May 07. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.51-2.0.
The intervention is the standard Educate Girls CLT program.
Intervention Start Date
2011-07-01
Intervention End Date
2014-05-01
Primary Outcomes (end points)
Academic performance - test scores, attendance, enrollment and retention.
Primary Outcomes (explanation)
Secondary Outcomes (end points)
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)
Experimental Design
Randomized trial. 100 villages were selected in rural areas of Jalore district. These schools were then assigned to treatment and control groups based upon stratified random sampling, with strata determined by school-level DISE data, primarily concerning school infrastructure and size. The total sample contains 230 schools in those 100 villages.
Experimental Design Details
Randomization Method
Randomization done in office by computer. Stratified based upon publicly-available DISE data.
Randomization Unit
Randomized at the village level. 98 villages, containing 230 schools.
Was the treatment clustered?
Yes
Sample size: planned number of clusters
98 villages (230 schools).
Sample size: planned number of observations
Sampled schools contain approximately 10,000 students in grades 3-5 for each year of the study.
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
Approximately 5,000 students in both treatment and control for each year of the study.
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)