All of Huwelium's Comments + Replies

Epilogue: I am happy to report that the donors have decided today to donate 1 million dollars (CAD) over the next five years to support Teaching at the Right Level, Africa. This initiative is helping to change education systems in African countries so that students in primary school can learn to read, write and count (which is sadly not the case right now, for the most part). Since writing my report, Teaching at the Right Level, Africa has also been reviewed and recommended by Founders Pledge

I thank all of you for your thoughts and comments and am v... (read more)

@HStencil, TechnoServe does seem like an interesting organization. There is definitely some similarity to Village Enterprise, but Village Enterprise is focused on the graduation approach while TechnoServe runs a broader range of programs including support to small and medium enterprises. I was also very interested in small and medium enterprise support, but my review of the evidence on this suggests that it's inconclusive whether such programs have had success at creating jobs or reducing poverty. Of course, it's entirely possible that TechnoServ... (read more)

1
HStencil
4y
Thanks so much for looking into this and posting your read of the research! I'm glad I now have a clearer sense of how these two types of interventions compare to one another. The flaws you noted in TechnoServe's internal evaluation are certainly quite concerning, and I'm glad someone brought them to my attention.

tomwein, I just looked through the RCT. The reduction in violence is indeed significant and promising. In terms of test scores, though, they report "There was no evidence that the intervention had an impact on any educational test scores". Test scores and income were the main metrics we were focusing on for education interventions, so this intervention doesn't seem like a good match to the donors' preferences at this stage. From reading the RCT, it seems that studies about violence prevention in school are quite novel and that the evide... (read more)

samcart, just a quick note that TaRL Africa is (or was) part of J-PAL's Innovation in Government Initiative (or its predecessor, the Government Partnership Initiative). See these links:

https://www.povertyactionlab.org/blog/1-16-18/increasing-use-data-and-evidence-real-world-policy-stories-j-pals-government

https://www.povertyactionlab.org/blog/8-8-17/zambia-scale-teaching-right-level-program-1800-schools

@smclare Thanks for giving some background on the Founders Pledge cost-effectiveness scenarios. For TaRL, I'm surprised that you say that the optimistic scenario is the unfathomably best case scenario. Even in that scenario, impacts are assumed to last 20 years, and the impact of test scores improvements on earnings does not use the most optimistic cases mentioned in the Founders Pledge education report. It seems fathomable impacts could last a whole career (say 40 years). As you can see from my cost-effectiveness estimates for TaRL, my unfathomably ... (read more)

@smclare: I'm glad you liked the report :) I definitely hope it can be helpful to others, since alot of work went into it! If it can save others some time, that would be great!

I'll check out the Marginal Revolution post on Millenium Villages and see if I can include a few sentences about that in the report.

As for TaRL Africa, alot of what they are doing is directly implementing TaRL in different African countries with partners and trying to ensure that the scale up there is a success. So I don't think of it as being mainly advocacy. You&apos... (read more)

Hi samcart,

I'm glad you liked the report :) Thanks for the detailed and constructive feedback! Note: One reason that it isn't too long is that other reports preceded it (on education, early childhood development, small and medium enterprise support, rural electrification and long-term effects of cash transfers). This final report tries to summarize things.

Regarding the other organizations that implement the graduation approach in Africa, I did indeed look into them (see the report on cash transfers for details). BRAC might have been a good choice... (read more)

I think the donors do indeed intend to commit for 5 years, for the reason tomwein invokes. But of course if new evidence suggests an intervention really isn't having the impact that we expected, or something else that seems much more promising comes along, presumably they could still revisit their commitment on an annual basis.

Regarding TaRL, the intervention has been studied extensively. The main uncertainty is whether and to what extent gains in test scores translate to long-term outcomes like higher income. But since the donors also care about impr... (read more)

Thanks for the recommendation, tomwein. Could you provide a link to the RCTs or other experimental evidence?

3
tomwein
4y
Of course - this is the main RCT: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/langlo/article/PIIS2214-109X(15)00060-1/abstract

Thanks for your feedback Carl, and for the links to the Open Phil reports on Center for Global Development and Target Malaria. I will check them out. One thing I have to keep in mind though is the donor's preferences/mandate. While these are somewhat fuzzy/open-ended, they did not seem very interested in policy advocacy or interventions where there isn't yet clear evidence of impact.

Hi Wayne,

Thanks for your post. I would love to get in touch and compare notes on research for advising donors. I’ll try to reach you via this site’s messaging.

Sorry for the very late reply (I don’t get alerts when someone posts here). I believe the difference comes simply from the wide range of cost effectiveness of education interventions. As mentioned in the Google doc, “Rachel Glennerster mentions in an 80000 Hours podcast that good interventions typically deliver at least 1 learning adjusted year of schooling (LAYS) per 100 USD spent, with some interve

... (read more)

Yes, you can check out this webpage: https://www.givewell.org/international/technical/programs/education

Here's a relevant excerpt:

" Evidence of effect on outcomes (such as income, health, or social outcomes) rather than outputs (such as increased time in school or improved test scores). There are a number of variables that can be used to measure the effects of education interventions, and we place significantly more emphasis on the effects on some variables than others. We distinguish between 'outputs' of education interventions, name... (read more)

I hadn’t seen it. Will definitely check it out. Thanks Saulius!

We’re planning to look into early childhood interventions (including things like deworming, improved nutrition, etc.) separately. Having said that, we had put deworming aside since it’s basically presented by GiveWell as “low probability of high impact” which didn’t appeal to the donors. But as you say, we should review what the evidence is in terms of education impact. I’ll add that to my to do list.

Thanks Aidan, Aaron and Khorton for your comments - much appreciated!

I definitely agree that GiveWell does excellent work, and we are indeed thinking of including a GiveWell charity (or more) in our final recommendation to the donors, which will probably include a few charities rather than just one. As Aidan mentioned, GiveDirectly seems like it might be the best fit with the donors’ criteria, among GiveWell’s top charities (some of their standout charities might also be a good fit).

Regarding education interventions, GiveWell did not have any recommendatio

... (read more)
2
Kirsten
5y
I believe GiveWell have said that schistosomiosis deworming can lead to better school attendance and performance, although I think the evidence is mixed. Probably worth looking into.

Hello Marcus,

I've just posted today about a review that was performed by a member of Effective Altruism Québec on education interventions and charities in Sub-Saharan Africa. The review is here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-JzmsKJFHPq3j1vAypy8yZM7NbGRco6e_S5con3TOTI/edit?usp=sharing

Thought I would let you know in case it's relevant for the Priority Wiki.

Thanks Naryan for starting this interesting discussion! My own two cents:

-I attended a presentation organized by Valeurs Mobilières Desjardins about two years back on socially responsible investing (SRI). The upshot was that the research on this indicates that SRI investments perform comparably (neither better nor worse) to non-SRI investments in general. Assuming this applies to impact investment, and that the vast majority of EAs will invest part of the money they earn, it seems to me that as long as there are any positive social impacts from SRI and imp... (read more)