Accelerating India's Development: A State-Led Roadmap for Effective Governance

by Karthik Muralidharan

‘Everyone wants decentralization, but only until his level.

In particular, two commonly suggested ways of improving teacher quality are to pay them more, and to hire only ‘qualified’ teachers. Yet, studies find very little impact of increasing pay or having teaching credentials on teacher effectiveness at improving learning outcomes.15

One reason that well-intentioned policies fail is that they are often designed by elites who do not face the same constraints as the policies’ target populations. For instance, a policymaker might provide free textbooks with good intentions, without considering the possibility that most students are so far behind grade-level standards that they may not even be able to read the textbook. Similarly, adding a teacher to reduce class sizes may be of limited use if the teacher focuses on completing the textbook and syllabus while student learning levels are far behind. These examples illustrate how acting on high-quality research evidence can sharply improve the effectiveness of public spending.

So, assessments should evolve from saying ‘Student X scored Y per cent in the Class 5 exam’ to being able to say that, ‘Student X has demonstrated the following levels of competence in various topics and domains’. The levels can range from ‘not demonstrated’ to ‘mastered’ and would aim to provide feedback to parents, students, and eventually employers, about functional competencies as opposed to arbitrary marks.