Evaluating Educational Incentives in Chiapas, Mexico: Lessons from Randomized Control Trial

Foundation Escalera is a US-based non-profit organization working to provide education and improve the lives of Mexico’s less privileged citizens. Escalera recently partnered with the Government of Chiapas, which represents one of Mexico’s most marginalized communities, to gain more insight into Programa de Escuelas de Calidad (PEC), a federal program designed to transfer limited amounts of power to schools and communities, and to further explore the impact that incentives might have on student performance. Together, they launched Incentives to Learn, a one-year cluster randomized control trial (RCT) designed to determine the relative effects of monetary and non-monetary incentives on student achievement, parent participation, and continuation rates. A team of SIPA students was asked to develop a series of evaluation tools for the Incentives to Learn endline study.