Abstract
This impact evaluation study was designed to examine the influence of increased funding for the parental participation program on learning outcomes, parent and teacher involvement, as well as dropout and failure rates.
The parental participation program, also known as Apoyo a la Gestión Escolar (AGEs), or Support to School Management, is part of a larger Compensatory Education Project that is being implemented in the most marginalized municipalities of Mexico. AGEs component was altered to provide additional resources to 125 participating schools. The AGEs financial support consists of quarterly transfers to Parent Associations' school accounts, averaging $600 per year depending on a school size. Participating schools received double the usual amount.
The relationship between extra funding, participation and outcomes were investigated. AGEs schools that received extra grants were compared to a group of similar AGEs schools that did not get the additional funding.
The data was used to address the following research questions:
- Does the increased AGEs grant further parental participation? Does parental participation improve teacher effort? Does the increased grant improve teacher effort?
- Does the increased grant lead to reduced repetition, dropout and failure rates?
- Does the increased grant lead to improved learning outcomes, as measured by math and reading scores over time using ENLACE?
Four baseline questionnaires were administered to 247 school principals, 247 parents, 402 teachers and 8,970 students.
The baseline survey was conducted in October-November 2007, the first follow-up assessment took place in June-December 2008, the second follow-up in January-February 2010, and the endline survey was carried out in May-June 2010.
Datasets from the baseline research are documented here.
