Ceara Teacher Feedback Program Impact Evaluation 2014: Baseline Survey (Brazil)

Abstract

In Brazil, policy makers in the state of Ceara are looking at how providing information to schools about best teaching practices, as well as offering peer learning opportunities, can help boost the performance of less effective teachers. The state government wants to stimulate more interaction among teachers at the school level that will lead to faster and cheaper diffusion of good practices within schools. The Secretariat requested World Bank assistance with the design and implementation of the random assignment experiment during the 2015 school year to measure cost-effectiveness of this approach.

The baseline data collection was carried out in November 2014. Researchers used "Stallings Classroom Snapshot" instrument to gather information about teachers' use of time, materials and interactive pedagogical practices. The observations were made in 3,176 classrooms of 10th, 11th and 12th grade in randomly selected 300 schools.

The schools were randomly assigned to a treatment group (136 schools) or a control group (156 schools). The treatment was launched in March 2015. The treatment group received detailed feedback on the school's results from the classroom observations, information on teacher performance, self-help materials that included a book, videos and exercises about effective teaching strategies, and a log book and classroom observation templates to record teachers' observations of one other. The control schools received neither feedback nor information. The endline survey was conducted in November 2015. After the treatment, researchers assessed the results of student test scores to determine whether the campaign helped improve classroom learning.