Evidence Library

Evaluation Interim Report for the Georgia II Improving General Education Quality Project's School Rehabilitation and Training Activities
Evidence | Publications

Evaluation Interim Report for the Georgia II Improving General Education Quality Project's School Rehabilitation and Training Activities

Published: Oct 07, 2019
Publisher: Washington, DC: Mathematica
Global Education and Workforce Development

Associated Project

Georgia: Impact Evaluation of the General Education Project

Time frame: 2013-2021

Prepared for:

Millennium Challenge Corporation

Authors

Ira Nichols-Barrer

Nicholas Ingwersen

Camila Fernandez

Elena Moroz

Matt Sloan

Key Findings

School Rehabilitation:

  • In the first phase of school rehabilitation (29 schools), students experienced large improvements compared to baseline in heating, lighting, sanitation, building quality, and access to science laboratories and recreation facilities.
  • Students and teachers agreed that these improvements addressed barriers to using classroom time effectively on instruction.
  • The final report will estimate impacts for all rehabilitated schools and measure whether infrastructure upgrades improved learning outcomes.

Educator Training:

  • The teacher training component was successfully delivered on a nationwide scale, with high completion rates for school directors (93 percent) and teachers (82 percent).
  • One month after the one-year training sequence concluded, teachers reported that they had improved confidence using student-centered teaching practices, and school directors reported that they had increased provision of instructional leadership. However, there was little evidence of immediate changes in teachers’ classroom instruction practices.
  • Planners of the teacher training component anticipate that further changes in instructional practices could develop over time. The final report will examine trends in teaching practices several years after the training sequence ended.

Many of the school buildings in the country of Georgia are inadequately maintained, dilapidated, and uncomfortable for students and teachers, particularly during the winter months. In addition, teachers and school directors in Georgia often lack access to professional development opportunities that encourage high quality instructional practices, instructional leadership, and school management. To address these issues, the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) sponsored the Improving General Education Quality (IGEQ) Project. The project included an Improved Learning Environment Infrastructure (ILEI) activity that focused on school rehabilitation and a Training Educators for Excellence (TEE) activity that supported professional development by training and mentoring teachers and school directors. In this interim report, Mathematica researchers describe a preliminary set of evaluation findings on the school rehabilitation activity and the training activity for teachers and school directors.

Efficiency Meets Impact.
That's Progress Together.

To solve their most pressing challenges, organizations turn to Mathematica for deeply integrated expertise. We bring together subject matter and policy experts, data scientists, methodologists, and technologists who work across topics and sectors to help our partners design, improve, and scale evidence-based solutions.

Work With Us