The CGD Podcast – "Lant Pritchett: The Rebirth of Education"

Date: October 29, 2013
Host: Lawrence MacDonald (Center for Global Development)
Guest: Lant Pritchett (Senior Fellow, CGD; Professor, Harvard; Author: "The Rebirth of Education: Schooling Ain’t Learning")

Episode Overview

This episode centers on the urgent crisis in global education: the disconnect between increasing school enrollment and the persistently poor learning outcomes in developing countries. Lant Pritchett shares moving stories, research findings, and his arguments for fundamentally reforming education systems. The conversation moves from Lant’s field experiences in India to systemic issues worldwide, and culminates in proposals for transforming "spider" (centralized) systems into more dynamic "starfish" (decentralized, locally accountable) educational models.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Startling Realities from the Field: India’s Education Crisis

• Illiteracy Despite Attendance ([00:50]–[03:25])

  • Lant recounts observing Indian NGOs test children's reading abilities in their homes.
  • “You would see, you know, 11 year old kids, 12 year old kids reporting they were in third grade who literally couldn't even tell the direction of the text.” (Pritchett, [01:05])
  • Shockingly, children’s parents are blindsided by this; a father, upon learning his son in grade five is illiterate, cries out in anger at a community meeting.

• Accountability Void ([03:25]–[04:21])

  • The local principal responds dismissively to parental outrage, showing zero accountability.
  • “Of course your child's a donkey. You're a donkey if you send the children, your stupid kids to school. It's not our fault if we can't teach them. It's your fault.” (Pritchett quoting Principal, [03:15])
  • Despite community outrage, the meeting and subsequent discussions led to no change—schools continued to deliver poor outcomes.

2. Contract vs. Civil Service Teachers: The Power of Even Minimal Accountability

• Contract Teachers Outperform, at Fraction of Cost ([04:35]–[06:08])
  • The state of Uttar Pradesh hires contract teachers at just 20% of the salary of regular civil-service teachers.
  • “...the kids learned twice as much with the contract teachers than with the civil service teachers.” (Pritchett, [05:15])
  • Regular teachers, insulated from consequences, deliver worse outcomes. Even slight potential for accountability dramatically boosts learning—and finances stretch much further.

3. Learning Environments & Inequality in Treatment

• Hostile, Unequal School Climate ([06:08]–[07:24])
  • Surveys show widespread physical abuse: “About 29% of the kids reported having been pinched or beaten in the previous month. So... over the course of the whole year it's like everybody. Like everybody, essentially.” (Pritchett, [06:35])
  • Government schools treat the poorest children most harshly (twice as likely to be abused as richer peers; in private schools, rates are equal), upending the idea that public schools are at least an equalizing force.

4. The Global Picture: Not Just India

• Low Learning Across Many Countries ([07:24]–[08:16])
  • Comparable failures in Bangladesh, Pakistan, East Africa—widespread inability to master basic literacy or numeracy.
  • “We've had lots of kids in school for lots of years and they're just not mastering even the rudimentary basics...” (Pritchett, [07:48])

5. Flawed Metrics and Perverse Incentives

• Enrollment ≠ Learning ([08:16]–[09:11])
  • Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) focused on enrollment; the world met or nearly met these targets.
  • “By only measuring butts in seats and not ideas in heads, I think we've done a disservice.” (Pritchett, [08:58])

Proposed Solutions for Reform

1. From Bureaucratic "Spiders" to Autonomous "Starfish" ([10:17]–[14:51])

• Decentralization & Local Accountability:

  • Move away from top-down, centralized systems (“spiders”) that control everything from the center.
  • “Go back to when schooling was more locally controlled, but with the addition of performance pressure and flexible financing.” (Pritchett, [10:30])
  • Empowered educators and parents, not just “parents beating up teachers.”

• Metaphor Explained:

  • Spider: Centralized, rigid—if the center (spider) fails, the system collapses ([12:21]–[13:36]).
  • Starfish: Decentralized, adaptable—local legs act independently, more robust ([14:17]–[14:51]).
  • “If you take a starfish and you cut it into five bits, you get five starfish. It's a very robust mechanism.” (Pritchett, [14:33])

2. Information, Measurement & Flexible Financing ([10:17]–[14:51])

• Systems need:
  • Clear performance metrics—not high-stakes testing, but basic tracking of whether and what children are learning.
  • “Having some idea of what the performance goals that we want for children to have.” (Pritchett, [11:35])
  • Fiscal flows that allow local remedy of inequality, rather than recreating inequalities via pure market logic.

3. The Role of International Actors ([15:09]–[16:43])

• Change What the World Measures:
  • International agencies have enforced a definition of success that’s only about enrollment.
  • Future goals should emphasize actual learning.
  • “The first step to like unleashing the starfish is to create a performance metric.... Just make it unacceptable that countries not know about the learning of their kids.” (Pritchett, [16:26])

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the Core Failure:
  • “Butts in seats, not ideas in heads...” ([08:58])
• Accountability Crisis:
  • “It's not our fault if we can't teach them. It's your fault. Just complete insouciance about any accountability for performance.” ([03:15])
• Hope and Mechanisms for Change:
  • “True dedicated professionals have no problem with being engaged in a system in which they give an account of their performance.” ([21:23])

Country Case Studies & Positive Examples

• Brazil & Chile ([16:51]–[18:52])
  • Four key reforms:
    • Publish annual school-level learning outcomes for all to see.
    • Decentralize school management (municipalize).
    • Encourage local experimentation and innovation.
    • Allow evidence and data to be shared and acted on locally, not from above.
  • “Brazil... is improving its performance on these scores considerably more than other countries that have yet to fully buy into the more starfishy model.” ([18:43])

Parental Engagement & External Pressure

• Donor/External Eyes: ([18:52]–[21:23])
  • Story: Host’s experience sponsoring a girl in Uganda—letters sent to donors increase accountability (and learning!)
  • Lant notes research backs the fact that these outside expectations can have outsized positive effects.

Looking Ahead: Hope & Concrete Goals

• Five-Year Vision ([21:36]–[24:42])
  • “In five years, every country in the world could know where their children are, right? ...On some moderately comparable basis.” (Pritchett, [21:58])
  • Early reading as the potential universal learning metric.
  • Making learning outcomes transparent will shock and motivate reform.
  • Unleashing existing “dynamism” through experimentation and sharing of best practices.
  • Establish targets and timelines for closing the learning gap with affluent countries.
  • “Your child's child's child's child's child's child... might be at those levels. And that's only in half the countries because in the other half they're going backwards. So the answer is never.” (Pritchett, [24:19])

Concluding Reflections

• Big Picture: Centralized, input-driven bureaucracies are failing to deliver learning; change requires local empowerment, measurement of outcomes, and international support for learning-focused systems.
• Key Change: Shift from counting “butts in seats” to tracking (and acting on) learning for every child.
• Quote to Remember:
  • “But for instance, early learning to read is a really critical part of the entire education experience. Five years from now, we should not be far from having every country in the world know where their children are on learning, say by grade three on a reasonably comparable basis of what reading means, what literacy means, what comprehension means.” (Pritchett, [22:11])

For additional episodes and the full book, visit the Center for Global Development’s podcast archive.