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This book gathers in one volume all the information needed to use ADePT Edu, the software platform created by the World Bank for the reporting and analysis of education indicators and education inequality. It includes a primer on education data availability, an operating manual for the software, a technical explanation of all the education indicators generated, and an overview of global education inequality using ADePT Edu. The World Bank developed ADePT Edu to fill the need for a user-friendly program designed to give everyone the ability to organize and analyze education data from households. ADePT Edu can be used with any household survey with the aid of its user friendly interface, generating education tables and graphics that comply with international standards for performance indicators. Because this volume is a compendium its chapters can be consulted independently of each other, depending on the need of users.

This article contrasts policy intent and policy implementation in school autonomy and accountability. The analysis uses a conceptual framework based on the interaction between school autonomy, student assessment, and accountability as elements of a closed system. The article analyzes the implementation of school autonomy and accountability policy, using data collected from 226 schools in Thailand that participated in the 2009 PISA survey. To understand how autonomy and accountability relate to student achievement, the study estimates a linear regression with PISA reading achievement as the dependent variable and indicators of autonomy and accountability (and control variables) as the independent variables. The estimates suggest that students at schools exercising a higher level of operational autonomy than the level ascribed by regulation tend to have PISA reading scores 6.0–8.6 points higher than students at schools that behave less autonomously. These results are consistent with other research findings.

Biases when piloting an innovation One is the famed Hawthorne effect (named not for the person who coined it—Henry Landsberger—but for the name of the company he was studying: Per-unit costs of things change when an innovation is scaled; this alters the benefit/cost ratio. The Center for Universal Education at Brookings is proud to be partnering with the Global Partnership for Education’s (GPE) Knowledge and Innovation Exchange (KIX), through the Research on Scaling the Impact of Innovations in Education (ROSIE) project, to explore scaling-related issues with national decisionmakers.

Turns out, however, that there’s scant research on how government decisionmakers decide to support and scale an innovation—and even less in the field of education (most is focused on scaling in health care, agriculture, and poverty alleviation). [...]some data are more desirable than others, and policymakers need support in making use of data: [...]data have known limitations, such as: (1) The accuracy of test score data depends on how they’re interpreted; (2) there are always factors that research cannot capture; (3) using randomized control trials when piloting an innovation can be misleading; and (4) too much data can lead to decision paralysis. The Center for Universal Education (CUE) at Brookings has partnered with the Global Partnership for Education’s (GPE) Knowledge and Innovation Exchange (KIX), a joint partnership between the Global Partnership for Education (GPE) and International Development Research Centre (IDRC), to undertake research on the scaling process in education, including how decisionmakers identify and adopt innovations to scale, and the role that trade-offs and key scaling drivers play in the process.

Participation in the WIC program tends to shift grocery expenditures in favor of more nutritious food. Dairy data show that WIC women consumed more nutrient-dense foods than non-WIC women. WIC women and their families spent significantly less on meals away from home than control families, suggesting a more efficient use of the food budget. WIC's impact on unintended recipients is negligible, while its impact on foods for WIC children is positive and highly significant. Recall data on monthly food expenditures indicate that total food expenditures and grocery expenditures did not increase as a result of program participation.