In this episode, RISE Research Fellow Jason Silberstein speaks to Jishnu Das, Professor at Georgetown University and a Principal Investigator of the RISE Pakistan Country Research Team. They discuss Jishnu and his team’s ambitious research agenda, which is not simply studying the impact of a new education policy or intervention, but trying to build a fresh description of how the education system works. They talk about what makes a good school and how to measure it; why comparing public and private schools hides more than it helps; 'Zombie Schools' that are feeding on kids brains; and why every child that doesn’t learn is the fault of a badly engineered system and the ways we can change that.

Links

• Heterogeneity in School Value-Added and the Private Premium by Andrabi, Bau, Das, and Khwaja (RISE Working Paper)
• The Value of Private Schools: Evidence from Pakistan by Carneiro, Das, and Reis (Journal Article)
• Teacher Value Added in a Low-Income Country by Bau and Das (Journal Article)
• Upping the Ante: The Equilibrium Effects of Unconditional Grants to Private Schools by Andrabi, Das, Khwaja, Özyurt, and Singh (Working Paper)
• Why Do Households Leave School Value Added on the Table? The Roles of Information and Preferences by Ainsworth, Dehejia, Pop-Eleches, and Urquiola (Working Paper)
• Bad Boys by Ferguson (Book)
• Low-Cost Private Schools in Tanzania: A Descriptive Analysis by Sabarwal, Sununtnasuk, and Ramachandran (Working Paper)

Guest biography

Jishnu Das

Jishnu Das is a Principal Investigator on the RISE Pakistan team. He is a Professor at the McCourt School of Public Policy and the Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. His work focuses on health and education in low and middle-income countries, with an emphasis on social markets, or common, but complex, conflagrations of public and private education and health providers operating in a small geographical space. He was previously a lead economist at the World Bank’s Development Research Group, where his research focused on the delivery of quality education and health services. He has authored numerous education-related works, including “India Shining and Bharat Drowning: Comparing Two Indian States to the Worldwide Distribution in Mathematics Achievement” (Journal of Development Economics), and “Teacher Shocks and Student Learning: Evidence from Zambia” (Journal of Human Resources), in addition to work co-authored with Tahir Andrabi and Asim I. Khwaja. Das was awarded a PhD in economics from Harvard University and a BA from St. Stephen’s College in New Delhi, India. He was an author of the Learning and Educational Achievement in Punjab Schools (LEAPS) report, an extensive study of the schooling environment more than 100 villages in rural Pakistan.

Jason Silberstein

Jason Silberstein is a Research Fellow for RISE at the Blavatnik School of Government. His research explores the relationship between schools and the communities they serve.

Before joining RISE, he worked as a consultant...