Augmenting State Capacity for Child Development: Experimental Evidence from India

Journal of Political Economy · 2023 · 19 citations

• Political Science
• Political Science
• Computer Science

We use a large-scale randomized experiment to study the impact of augmenting staffing in the world’s largest public early-childhood program: India’s Integrated Child Development Services. Adding a worker doubled net preschool instructional time and led to increases of 0.28σ and 0.46σ in math and language test scores after 18 months for children who remained enrolled in the program and 0.13σ and 0.10σ for all children enrolled at baseline. Rates of stunting and severe malnutrition were also lower in the treatment group for children who remained enrolled. A cost-benefit analysis suggests that the benefits of augmenting staffing significantly exceed its costs. These effects are likely to replicate even at larger scales of program implementation.

The role of teachers' commitment to implement in delivering evidence-based social-emotional learning programs

Journal of School Psychology · 2021 · 24 citations

• Psychology
• Applied psychology
• Developmental psychology

Growth-Mindset Interventions at Scale: Experimental Evidence From Argentina

Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis · 2020 · 25 citations

• Computer Science
• Psychology
• Mathematics education

This is one of the first evaluations of a “growth-mindset” intervention at scale in a developing country. I randomly assigned 202 public secondary schools in Salta, Argentina, to a treatment group in which Grade 12 students were asked to read about the malleability of intelligence, write a letter to a classmate, and post their letters in their classroom, or to a control group. The intervention was implemented as intended. Yet, I find no evidence that it affected students’ propensity to find tasks less intimidating, school climate, school performance, achievement, or post-secondary plans. I rule out small effects and find little evidence of heterogeneity. This study suggests that the intervention may be more challenging to replicate and scale than anticipated.