American Economic Review Vol. 109 No. 4 2019

Disrupting Education? Experimental Evidence on Technology-Aided Instruction in India

Karthik Muralidharan¹; Abhijeet Singh²; Alejandro J. Ganimian³

¹ Department of Economics, University of California San Diego, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla CA, NBER, and J-PAL (email: ) · ² Department of Economics, Stockholm School of Economics, Sveavagen 65, Stockholm, Sweden (email: ) · ³ NYU Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development, 246 Greene Street, New York, NY (email: )

Abstract

We study the impact of a personalized technology-aided after-school instruction program in middle-school grades in urban India using a lottery that provided winners with free access to the program. Lottery winners scored 0.37 σ higher in math and 0.23 σ higher in Hindi over just a 4.5-month period. IV estimates suggest that attending the program for 90 days would increase math and Hindi test scores by 0.6 σ and 0.39 σ respectively. We find similar absolute test score gains for all students, but much greater relative gains for academically-weaker students. Our results suggest that well-designed, technology-aided instruction programs can sharply improve productivity in delivering education.

DOI

10.1257/aer.20171112

Volume

109

Issue

4

Pages

1426-1460

Language

en

Sources

bibtex:phds-export.bib crossref openalex

Cite

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