Outline

1. RECURSO-PerúPopularizing and instrumentalizing reading attainment standards: a modest Odyssey. Ian Walker, World BankEGRA WorkshopWashington DC, 13th March 2008

2. Outline • “60 words a minute”: a standard and a video to unbalance the low quality equilibrium • An excited response: politicians, NGOs, development professionals • Institutionalizing the measurement of attainment in the REACT DPL series: a national census; an alternative metric • Comparing the fluency test with a written comprehension test: preliminary findings from Junin • Next steps

3. “60 words a minute” • The video was shown at breakfast • Uncovering the scandal of schools poor performance: “shocking the system” • Showing that outcomes can be different even in poor, isolated, indigenous communities • Promoting a metric which links to an appropriate pedagogical strategy • A standard parents can understand: how can you know if your child is learning well at school? • Operationalizing accountability at local level: making schools responsible for what they achieve (school and teacher performance as critical variables determining outcomes)

4. An excited response • Politicians: demand for improved performance of schools; link to results based management • Media: broadcasting the video for free • NGOs: adopting the standard to guide performance of their schools – eg Solaris, Peru • Development professionals: a breath of fresh air. Pirated copies!

5. Institutionalizing a policy • REACT DPL: strengthening standards and accountability • Use of censal and administrative data - making service producing units accountable • Peru decided on census of second grade reading attainment. Now covering almost 80% of schools/kids • Disagreements on how & what to measure: fluency test versus written reading comprehension test

6. Junin regional study: comparing the two metrics • Bank funded in-depth study of education conditions in Junin • Fluency tests and reading comprehension tests applied to almost 500 children • Result: strong correlation between two metrics: correlation coefficient of 0.54 (99% confidence level). Rises to 0.59 in rural schools and 0.62 in multigrade. • 70% of kids are ranked in same decile or within a quintile (up or down) on both tests.

9. Conclusions • Two tests gave very similar results • Children coached on fluency will do well on the comprehension test • Children with poor fluency likely to do badly on comprehension • Difficult to argue for using fluency test in universal evaluation; comprehension test correlates well and is easier to administer • Obfuscating transformations of test scores into categories with no common-sense meaning is not intrinsic to either test • In either case, one can use score of 100% as an implicit (absolute) standard against which each child is measured

10. Next steps • Institutionalizing and broadening the censal evaluation • Feedback from census into school improvement plans / school level targets • Implementing effective strategies to improve attainment • Early reading specialization • Reading materials • Support and supervision • Tracking individual children’s attainment

11. Thank you