Evaluation Design Report for the Georgia Improving General Education Quality Project's School Rehabilitation Activity

The Millennium Challenge Corporation is supporting Georgia’s efforts to improve educational outcomes by sponsoring the Improving General Education Quality Project, which includes the Improved Learning Environment Infrastructure (ILEI) component. This component invests in school rehabilitation to provide safe learning environments, inputs that are intended to decrease students’ and teachers’ absenteeism and improve time on task during the school day, leading to improved student learning and higher educational attainment outcomes. This design report provides a detailed explanation of the evaluation design chosen for the ILEI component. The report proposes a mixed-methods study design, with three components: (1) a process evaluation examining the program’s implementation and costs; (2) a randomized control trial (RCT) impact evaluation using a school-level stratified random assignment design; and (3) in-depth analysis of the relationship between changes in school infrastructure and changes in the learning environment, using qualitative methods in a subset of study schools. The evaluation will focus on estimating the impacts of school rehabilitation on students and teachers, particularly the population of students enrolled in grade 8 or grade 10 at the baseline in study schools. The study design calls for collection of survey data on the ILEI activity’s key outcomes from students, parents, teachers and school directors. This will be complemented by a combination of administrative data, study-administered learning assessments, direct observations of student attendance and school infrastructure, and qualitative research.