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This study conducted a randomized evaluation of a program in the Brazilian state of Ceara. The program was designed to improve teachers' effectiveness by increasing their professional interaction and sharing of classroom practice. In 175 of 350 secondary schools, teachers were provided with benchmarked feedback from classroom observations and access to expert coaching. Schools' uptake of the coaching program was high (85 percent). Over a single school year, the program increased teachers' time on instruction and student engagement and produced statistically significant gains in student learning on the Ceara state assessment and the national secondary school exit exam. Controlling for individual students' prior-year learning outcomes, schools exposed to the program had 0.05-0.09 standard deviation higher performance on the state test and 0.04-0.06 standard deviation higher scores on the national test. Implementation fidelity strongly boosted program impacts. In the 49 schools where the pedagogical coordinators achieved the highest certification at the end of the program, student scores were 0.13-0.23 standard deviation higher on the state test and 0.13-0.17 standard deviation higher on the national test. Coaching delivered by Skype kept the costs of the program low, USD 2.40 per student, and produced cost-effective impacts on learning in comparison with other rigorously evaluated teacher training interventions. The combination of classroom observation feedback and expert coaching appears to be a promising strategy for whole-school efforts to raise teacher effectiveness.

Classroom Observation --- Coaching --- Instructional Time --- Randomized Control Trial --- Student Engagement --- Student Learning --- Teacher Feedback

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This paper tests the effectiveness of an entertainment education television series, MTV Shuga, aimed at providing information and changing attitudes and behaviors related to HIV/AIDS. Using a simple model, the paper shows that "edutainment" can work through an individual or a social channel. This study is a randomized controlled trial conducted in urban Nigeria, where young viewers were exposed to MTV Shuga or a placebo television series. Among those exposed to MTV Shuga, the trial created additional variation in the social messages they received and the people with whom they watched the show. The study finds significant improvements in knowledge and attitudes toward HIV and risky sexual behavior. Treated subjects are twice as likely to get tested for HIV eight months after the intervention. The study also finds reductions in sexually transmitted diseases among women. These effects are stronger for viewers who reported being more involved with the narrative, consistent with the psychological underpinnings of edutainment. The trial's experimental manipulations of the social norm component did not produce significantly different results from the main treatment. The individual effect of edutainment thus seems to have prevailed in the context of this study.

Health, Nutrition and Population --- HIV Aids --- MTV --- Randomized Control Trial --- Risky Sexual Behavior --- Sexually Transmitted Disease --- STDs

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A randomized control trial was conducted to study whether providing 10th grade students with information about the returns to upper secondary and tertiary education, and a source of financial aid for tertiary education, can contribute to improve student performance. The study finds that the intervention had no effects on the probability of taking a 12th grade national standardized exam three years after, a proxy for on-time high school completion, but a positive and significant impact on learning outcomes and self-reported measures of effort. The effects are larger for girls and students from households with a relatively high income. These findings are consistent with a simple model where time discount determines the increase in effort and only students with adequate initial conditions are able to translate increased effort into better outcomes.

Education for all --- Education gender & education --- Gender --- Information --- Primary education --- Randomized control trial --- RCT --- Returns to education --- School performance --- Secondary education --- Tertiary education

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Can financial education delivery be successfully decentralized? This paper studies a large-scale field experiment with 200 Savings and Credit Cooperative Associations (SACCOs) in Rwanda, and tests competing models of local financial education delivery. One-third of SACCOs, randomly selected, were invited to a comprehensive training-of-trainers (TOT) workshop and stipulated to send the SACCO manager, a loan officer, and a board member to be trained. Another one-third were invited to the same workshop, but allowed free selection of trainers. The latter resulted in significantly more community members and fewer loan officers being trained as trainers. Within a year, these trainers successfully disseminated content to 68,000 households, with higher session attendance in the autonomous selection group. Analysis from follow-up surveys finds stark differences in behavior change: recipients in the autonomous selection group show significant improvements in financial attitudes, rules of thumb, and planning, as well as budgeting and savings behaviors. In contrast, recipients in the fixed selection group show no significant improvements on any of the outcome measures. These results underscore the importance of community-led delivery of financial education programs.

Community-Led Delivery --- Cooperative Associations --- Credit --- Decentralization --- Finance --- Finance and Financial Sector Development --- Randomized Control Trial --- Rural Development --- Rural Education --- Savings

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Despite the widespread popularity of entrepreneurship education, there is thin evidence on its effectiveness in improving employment outcomes over the medium to long term. A potential time lag between entrepreneurial intentions and actions is sometimes presented as a reason why employment impacts are rarely observed. Based on a randomized control trial among university students in Tunisia, this paper studies the medium-term impacts of entrepreneurship education four years after students' graduation. The paper complements earlier evidence that documented small, short-term impacts on entry into self-employment and aspirations toward the future one year after graduation. The medium-term results show that the impacts of entrepreneurship education were short-lived. There are no sustained impacts on self-employment or employment outcomes four years after graduation. There are no lasting effects on latent entrepreneurship either, and the short-term increase in optimism also receded.

Educational sciences --- Employment and unemployment --- Entrepreneurship education --- Field experiment --- Labor markets --- Law and development --- Marketing --- Private sector development --- Private sector development law --- Private sector economics --- Randomized control trial --- Self-employment --- Skills --- Social protections and labor --- Training