Improving Educational Quality through Enhancing Community Participation: Results from a Randomized Field Experiment in Indonesia

Menno Pradhan,Arya Gaduh,Armida Alisjahbana,Daniel Suryadarma,Rima Prama Artha,Maisy Wong,Amanda Beatty

doi:10.1257/app.6.2.105

Abstract

Education ministries worldwide have promoted community engagement through school committees. This paper presents results from a large field experiment testing alternative approaches to strengthen school committees in public schools in Indonesia. Two novel treatments focus on institutional reforms. First, some schools were randomly assigned to implement elections of school committee members. Another treatment facilitated joint planning meetings between the school committee and the village council (linkage). Two more common treatments, grants and training, provided resources to existing school committees. We find that institutional reforms, in particular linkage and elections combined with linkage, are most cost-effective at improving learning. (JEL H52, I21, I25, I28, O15)

Highlights

By Menno Pradhan, Daniel Suryadarma, Amanda Beatty, Maisy Wong, Arya Gaduh, Armida Alisjahbana, and Rima Prama Artha*
We find that institutional reforms, in particular linkage and elections combined with linkage, are most cost-effective at improving learning. (JEL H52, I21, I25, I28, O15)
We report estimates of β in (1) where the dependent variable is replaced by the baseline value and only the treatment pradhan et al.: improving educational quality

Summary

Introduction

By Menno Pradhan, Daniel Suryadarma, Amanda Beatty, Maisy Wong, Arya Gaduh, Armida Alisjahbana, and Rima Prama Artha*. Some schools were randomly assigned to implement elections of school committee members Another treatment facilitated joint planning meetings between the school committee and the village council (linkage). American Economic Journal: applied economicsapril 2014 committees and parent teacher associations Often these government-sponsored institutions do not live up to their expectations (Banerjee and Duflo 2008; Bruns, Filmer, and Patrinos 2011). The first two are novel institutional reforms that improve the social capital of the school committee by strengthening its trustworthiness and relationship with the community (Ostrom and Ahn 2009). The first treatment facilitated democratic elections of school committee members. The second treatment linked school committees to the village council by facilitating joint planning meetings (we call this linkage)

Objectives

Results

Conclusion