Publication: Too Hard, Too Easy, or Just Right: The Productivity of Schooling and the Match between Child Skill and School Complexity
Loading...
Date
2025-02-07
ISSN
0258-6770
Published
2025-02-07
Author(s)
Editor(s)
Abstract
This study proposes a novel way of modeling the heterogeneous effects of schooling based on the notion that learning is maximized when the skill of the child matches the complexity of the learning experiences at school. It offers direct evidence about the importance of this match using longitudinal information on test scores and schooling attained by children from Peru, India, and Vietnam. Using data from Peru, it also finds that the relation between the effect of schooling and early childhood skill can follow an inverted-U shape. Increasing early childhood skill will raise the productivity of the school up to the point where it matches school complexity. Further increases in child skill, however, will reduce the productivity of schooling as they will widen the mismatch. If one relates the quality of schools to the amount of learning they produce, this framework predicts that quality gains can be achieved by reducing these mismatches.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“Castro, Juan F; Villacorta, Lucciano. 2025. Too Hard, Too Easy, or Just Right: The Productivity of Schooling and the Match between Child Skill and School Complexity. World Bank Economic Review. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/42779 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
Associated URLs
Associated content
Other publications in this report series
Journal
World Bank Economic Review
1564-698X
Journal Volume
Journal Issue
Collections
Related items
Showing items related by metadata.
No results found.
Users also downloaded
Showing related downloaded files
Publication Great Teachers : How to Raise Student Learning in Latin America and the Caribbean(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2015)The seven million teachers of Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) are the critical actors in the region's efforts to improve education quality and raise student learning levels, which lag far behind those of OECD countries and East Asian countries such as China. This book documents the high economic stakes around teacher quality, benchmarks the current performance of LAC's teachers, and delineates the key issues. These include low standards for entry into teacher training, poor quality training programs that are detached from the realities of the classroom, unattractive career incentives, and weak support for teachers once they are on the job. New research conducted for this report in close to 15,000 classrooms in seven different LAC countries - the largest cross-country study of this kind to date - provides a first-ever insight into how the region's teachers perform inside the classroom. It documents that the average teacher in LAC loses the equivalent of one day of instructional time per week because of inadequate preparation, excessive time on administration (taking attendance, passing out papers) and a surprisingly high share of time physically absent from the classrooms where they should be teaching. Teachers also make limited use of available learning materials, espcially those using information and communications technology (ICT), and are unable to keep the majority of their students engaged. The book sets out the three priority lines of reform needed to produce great teachers in LAC: policies to recruit better teachers; programs to groom teachers and improve their skills once they are in service; and stronger incentives to motivate teachers to perform their best throughout their career. In every area, the book distills the latest evidence from inside and outside the region to provide practical guidance to policymakers in the design of effective programs and sustainable reforms. A final chapter analyzes the politics of recent major teacher reforms in Chile, Peru, Ecuador and Mexico, chronicling the prominent role of teachers' unions and the political and communications strategies that have underpinned successful reforms.Publication The Impact of Climate Change on Education and What to Do about It(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-05-02)Education can be the key to ending poverty in a livable planet, but governments must act now to protect it. Climate change is increasing the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events such as cyclones, floods, droughts, heatwaves and wildfires. These extreme weather events are in turn disrupting schooling; precipitating learning losses, dropouts, and long-term impacts. Even if the most drastic climate mitigation strategies were implemented, extreme weather events will continue to have detrimental impacts on education outcomes.Publication Classroom Assessment to Support Foundational Literacy(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-03-21)This document focuses primarily on how classroom assessment activities can measure students’ literacy skills as they progress along a learning trajectory towards reading fluently and with comprehension by the end of primary school grades. The document addresses considerations regarding the design and implementation of early grade reading classroom assessment, provides examples of assessment activities from a variety of countries and contexts, and discusses the importance of incorporating classroom assessment practices into teacher training and professional development opportunities for teachers. The structure of the document is as follows. The first section presents definitions and addresses basic questions on classroom assessment. Section 2 covers the intersection between assessment and early grade reading by discussing how learning assessment can measure early grade reading skills following the reading learning trajectory. Section 3 compares some of the most common early grade literacy assessment tools with respect to the early grade reading skills and developmental phases. Section 4 of the document addresses teacher training considerations in developing, scoring, and using early grade reading assessment. Additional issues in assessing reading skills in the classroom and using assessment results to improve teaching and learning are reviewed in section 5. Throughout the document, country cases are presented to demonstrate how assessment activities can be implemented in the classroom in different contexts.Publication Panama Poverty and Equity Assessment 2024(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-02-12)Panama has been one of the fastest-growing countries in the region, with rapid economic expansion accompanied by significant poverty reduction. Driven by public and private investment as well as labor accumulation, the Panamanian economy grew by an annual average of 5.7 percent between 1990 and 2023, much higher than the regional average of 2.5 percent. This growth contributed to a significant reduction in poverty. Using the poverty line of US$6.85 per day per capita (2017 PPP), the share of Panamanians affected by poverty improved from one in two in 1989 to only one in ten lived in 2023. Nevertheless, Panama remains one of the most unequal countries in the world. While poverty in urban areas was 4.8 percent in 2023, poverty in indigenous regions (comarcas) reached 76 percent—15 times higher. Limited progress in reducing inequality, as measured by the Gini coefficient, contrasts with Panama’s achievements in other areas. Globally, Panama ranked 11th in inequality in 2000, with a Gini coefficient of 53.8. Two decades later, it ranked 8th, with a Gini coefficient of 50.9 as of 2022. This report examines Panama’s achievements and challenges in reducing poverty and inequality to inform policy options. With a special focus on the 2008–2023 period the report documents progress in poverty and equity in recent decades, highlighting access to basic services, expansion of quality jobs, improvement of human capital, and promotion of household resilience as critical policy priorities.Publication Choosing Our Future(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-09-04)Education can propel faster and better climate action in two crucial ways. First, education can galvanize behavior change at scale - not just for tomorrow, but also for today. Second, education can unlock skills and innovation to shift economies onto greener trajectories for growth. At the same time, education needs to be protected from climate change. Extreme climate events and temperatures are already eroding hard-won progress on schooling and learning. Climate change is causing school closures, learning losses, and dropouts. These will turn into long-run inter-generational earnings losses putting into jeopardy education’s powerful potential for spurring poverty alleviation and economic growth. Governments can act now to adapt schools for climate change in cost-effective ways. This report outlines new data, evidence, and examples on how countries can harness education to propel climate action. It provides an actionable policy agenda to meet development, education, and climate goals together, recognizing that tackling climate change requires changes to individual beliefs, behaviors, and skills – changes that education is uniquely positioned to catalyze.