Parents can play a crucial role in children's learning, particularly when children are out of school or during times of school closures. In this study, we evaluate the impacts of two distance educational interventions, which directly involved parents and were delivered via basic mobile phones,...

The COVID-19 pandemic forced schools and universities to transit from traditional class-based teaching to online learning. This paper investigates the impact produced by this shift on students' performance. We use administrative data of four cohorts of students enrolled in an Italian University...

We implement a teaching methodology aimed at improving primary school children's mathematical skills. The methodology, grounded in active and cooperative learning, focuses on peer interaction, sharing of ideas, learning from mistakes, and problem solving. We evaluate the causal effect of the...

This study examines the gendered effects of early and sustained exposure to high-performing peers on female educational trajectories. Exploiting random allocation to classrooms within middle schools, we measure the effect of male and female high performers on girls' high school placement...

While randomized controlled trials (RCTs) are the "gold standard" for impact evaluation, they face numerous practical barriers to implementation. In some circumstances, a randomized-encouragement design (RED) is a viable alternative, but applications are surprisingly rare. We discuss the...

We present first experimental evidence that relative performance feedback improves both the speed and quality with which challenging long-term tasks are completed. Providing university students with ongoing relative feedback on accumulated course credits accelerates graduation by 0.12 SD, and...

Good teachers are the backbone of a successful education system. Yet, in developing countries, teachers' content knowledge is often inadequate. This study documents that primary school math teachers in the department of Moraz'an in El Salvador only master 47 percent of the curriculum they teach....