Incentives for Mayors to Improve Learning : Evidence from State Reforms in Ceará, Brazil
Financial incentives for students, teachers, and schools are often used to promote learning. Yet, little is known about whether similar incentives for mayors produce analogous findings. This paper investigates this question by exploring a results-b...
| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Working Paper |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2021
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/691801610721382062/Incentives-for-Mayors-to-Improve-Learning-Evidence-from-state-reforms-in-Ceará-Brazil http://hdl.handle.net/10986/35024 |
| Summary: | Financial incentives for students,
teachers, and schools are often used to promote learning.
Yet, little is known about whether similar incentives for
mayors produce analogous findings. This paper investigates
this question by exploring a results-based financing reform
in Ceará, Brazil, which redistributes state resources to
municipalities based on education performance. Comparing
schools on both sides of Ceará's border over key
implementation periods, the paper shows that ninth grade
students who were exposed to the results-based financing
performed 0.15 standard deviation higher on mathematics and
language tests. These impacts increase twofold when Ceará
offers technical assistance to municipalities (pedagogical
and managerial) and become significant for fifth graders.
These gains are seen among students in the top performance
quantiles, but reformulating the results-based financing
rule to penalize municipalities with more low performers
significantly reduces learning gaps. The paper discuss
several mechanisms: the selection of school principals,
teacher training, the provision and quality of textbooks,
curriculum coverage, and school homework. |
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