Do Interventions at School Level Improve Educational Outcomes? Evidence from a Rural Program in Colombia

SummaryThis paper evaluates the impact that the “Rural Education Project—PER” had on Colombian rural schools. This supply-side scheme program included the implementation of flexible educational models adapted to the needs of the rural community and the provision of specialized didactic material and teacher training. We find positive and significant effects on measures of efficiency (dropout, passing, and failure rates) and quality in the schools where PER was implemented. The estimation is based on census information comprising more than 21,000 rural schools and is robust to three different methodologies of estimation and different comparison groups.