Transcripts For CSPAN3 Charter Schools In The Developing Countries 20170802

Thigh fank you for coming to. Im an Education Research fellow here at the American Enterprise institute. Also those who are joining on live stream and for our friends watching on cspan. Our event today Charter Schools in the developing world. With a keynote from Liberian Education minister George Werner. We have a simple program. Were going to have a brief video. A pictures worth a thousand words. To root todays conversations about school unles in liberia. Then well turn it over to minister werner. Following that, we have a fantastic panel today. With seth andrew from democracy builders. Amy black from results for development. And alejandro caballer from the International Finance corporation. Ill introduce them in detail when the panel joins me up here. Well have about 45 minutes of q a time with some opportunity for the audience to join as well. For those following on social media, we have a hash tag for our event. Its developingworldcharters. You can comment and also send questions which ill be checking on during the q a time. The event is being live streamed. The full video posted online after we conclude todays event. Were hear today to hear from minister werner about liberias bold approach for school reform. First want to give a little bit of context for those who dont already have it. Liberia is a african country. Over the past decades, liberia has seen no small tumult. The 1980s saw multiple coup detat s. And sort of a cycle of violence and unrest. That cull minute napted in 1989 in the first of two civil wars that lasted for 14 years with hundreds of thousands of casualties and more than 1. 3 liberians displaced. The country stabilized in 2003 to some degree and further in 2006 with the election of president ellen johnsonsirleaf. Former World Bank Economist and eventual Nobel Peace Prize recipient. Under president sirleaf, liberia continued to stabilize. Difficult work after years of war and political instability. And in 2014 the ebola outbreak. And a difficult emergency and destabilizing event for the country. Combating poverty and strengthening an Education System that was shuttered for the better part of a year of it on many educational matters, liberia lags behind. With low levels of Primary School attendance and completion. Low literally. Illustrative statistic. In 2013, nearly 25,000 students took the university of liberia Entrance Exam and no one passed. She charged Education Minister George Werner whos here with us to chart a new course in education. Independent school open raptors would run 93 Primary Schools. The program has drawn criticism and praise alike. Supporters cite the need for innovative change. Those are Partnership Schools for liberia schools. In the first democratic transfer of power since 1944. This will be a test of liberias Young Democratic institutions. Liberia and its School Reforms face both great change and great opportunity. We have a break video to give you a sense of the schools in liberia and the context for the psl reforms. All right. I hope that short video gives you some view on liberian schools. Now id like to invite Education Minister George Werner to come up for his keynote. He has previously talked at the High School College level, director general of liberian 2012 and 20 sa. He currently cochairs liberias Workforce Development task fosk and of course is the minister of education. Join me in welcoming minister werner. [ applause ] thank you for the kind introduction and thank you to aei for welcoming us here. Im here today to discuss liberias experience with publicprivate partnerships in education. First, let me say that im honored to be here on behalf of the liberian government and our president ellen johnsonsirleaf. As most of you know, president sirleaf became the first democratically elected female president in africa in 2005. That election was also another first for liberia. It was the first president ial election since the brutal rule of charles tiller and devastated conflict that crippled our country and took more than 200,000 lives. President sirleaf will leave office in january next year, having served two terms. Her departure from office respecting constitutional term limits marks another important milestone that should not be overlooked. It will be the first peaceful transfer of power in my country since 1944. And will consolidate our postwar democracy. As the president ial campaigns got a taste in advance of the elections in just a few months time, i am struck by just how far we have come. When you pick up a newspaper or turn on the radio in liberia, you will see and hear evidence of spirited political debate. A vibrant press and an engaged civil society. This is an achievement we should not take for granted. Though, i must say, occasionally, i remind myself that when i am one of the last one in the line of fire of criticism. Beyond our democratic achievements over the past decade, liberia has emerged as a postconflict success story. Innovation in Public Private partnerships have been introduced and are creating new platforms for collaboration in health care, human and Institutional Capacity building, philanthropy, infrastructure and education. We owe a debt of gratitude to the United States for serving as a partner along the journey. Through both democratic and republican administrations, through war and the return of peace, most recently, through the fight against ebola, the United States has been an essential partner. I want to thank the American People for your steadfast support. I want to thank all who contributed to ending ebola in my country. And i know i speak on behalf of not only the liberian government but, also, the liberian people, when i say that we look forward to continuing our Partnership Long into the future. When you look at the demo graphic trends not just in liberia but across the continent of africa, it becomes clear why International Partnership and collaboration are more important than ever before. Today, there are 420 million africans between the ages of 15 and 35. That number is expected to nearly double to over 830 million by 2050. This youth can either be a demographic [ inaudible ] with the potential of economy or it can be a ticking timebomb. Which depends on one thing. Education. 10 to 12 million African Youth currently enter the workforce every year. Many without the literacy or skills they need to succeed to find meaningful employment. Our Education Systems are failing to prepare our children for the jobs of yesterday, let alone the jobs of tomorrow. Too many of our young people sit with a hopeless future at home are fleeing the continent and are risking their lives to find opportunities abroad. At the same time, countries across the continent feel increased demand and pressure not only on our Education System but, also, health care and social services. Budgets are stretched to the breaking point. In this context, African Leaders need to think outside the box and find innovative solutions. In liberia, this is exactly what we have done. We are educating the first generation of liberian children who have not known war or conflict. They are too young to have experienced the days when children, rather than going school, were recruited as soldiers in the bloody conflict that tore our country apart. We hold their dreams and aspirations of this new generation in our hands. It is our responsibility to ensure that they have opportunities to succeed. That responsibility was front and center in my mind when i was appointed Education Minister by president sirleaf in june of 2015 and its still what drives me every day. When i spoke at the ministry of education, i already understood some of the challenges that i would face. I knew that our Education System was failing to educate. That 35 of our young women and 21 of our young men could not read a single sentence. I knew about the gender gap and that only 39 of women across liberia completed Primary School. And i knew about the inequality in Education Access in our rural areas with only 26 of women and 58 of men were illiterate. I have read all the studies and knew all the stats. And, as a former teacher myself, i had seen it firsthand. But when i began traveling across the country visiting schools, speaking to teachers, parents, and children, it became clearer that both reform was your gently needed. Urgently needed. Maintaining the status quo was not simply an option. We absolutely could not risk failing this or any future generations of liberian children. So, we embraced the opportunity to implement bold reform and truly transform our Education System. We launched a threeyear plan that includes increasing professionalization of teachers and principals across the country and conducting rig or ross monetary and evaluation to ensure we stay on track to reach our goals. We have taken an aggressive approach to identify and remove those workers from the teacher payroll. To date, we have removed nearly 2,000 workers which have led to 2. 5 million u. S. Dollars and in annual savings that can be reinvested in education. We also launched an innovative Public Private partnership that is testing new models for improving liberian Public Schools. That program, Partnership Schools for liberia, or psl for short, is what im here to discuss today. As i mentioned earlier, psl has an important distinction from Charter Schools from the Charter School model that you have here in the United States. All the schools in the program remain within the Public School system and employ teachers on the government payroll. They also do not admit students selectively, no based on socioeconomic status or on academic performance. Through the psl program, we partner with eight education providers, some local, some international, some notprofit, some forprofit. Each with a different model but all with proven experience in delivering quality education and improving literacy and outcomes. Those eight providers within the program are Bridge International academy, which im sure we will speak more of through the discussion. I have seen the operations in kenya first hand and in uganda and was impressed by the learning outcomes they were able to achieve and i invited them to liberia to partner with the government of liberia to do same. A nonprofit already running an academy in monrovia, the capital of liberia, provided both education and Services Like health care, psychosocial report and a feeding program. Street child, another nonprofit provider which also operates in sierra leone and nigeria and has the focus not only on providing education but, also, training and supporting communities to manage and hold their students to account. Rising academy, which, also operates a network of schools in sierra leone and has a wholechild approach to education. An ngo founded in bangladesh that has experience working across africa. Which runs a network of schools in nearby ghana. Last but not least the Liberian Youth Network or for short lynet and both local and liberian providers. In the first year of psl, which just concluded, operated as you heard earlier 93 schools in 13 counties across liberia providing free quality education to around 27,000 children. Following the first year, we have seen some encouraging initial results. According to the data weve seen both increased enrollments and impact on teacher behavior, including absenteeism and greater time teaching. Teacher attendance rates are about 90 on average. And are as high as 98 in the case of one provider. Teachers are also 9 less likely to be outside the classroom at psl schools. These may seem like small things that should be taken for granted but they are no minor achievements in the context such as liberia. To date, the program has also delivered much needed resources, including desks, chairs, infrastructure, learning material. A teacher for every classroom and expansive teacher training opportunities. They have also generated a new appreciation for a longer school day, all without charging any fees. Just this week, four of the eight providers in our psl Program Released the midline report, assessing their efforts during the first year of the program and highlighting key successes. It is deeply encouraging to see not only their commitment to measurement evaluation but also their positive impact on crucial areas including literacy and numeracy, teacher training, engagement of parents, communities and teachers learning. Rigorous evaluation have been built into the program from an early stage. Were currently awaiting results of an independent assessment being carried out by the center for Global Development in partnership with innovations for community action. While we wait for those results we will move into year two, with a modest increase in the psl schools. From 93 to 200, about 7 of liberias Public Schools. In the coming year, we will prioritize the regions such as the southeast of liberia, which have socioeconomic conditions that make it particularly acute. Phl has the resources to make quality education and ultimately make it accessible to all liberian students in a way that it has never been before, we will not move forward with any expansion until we have received the completed independent assessment and can justify the impact of psl on the students and the school system. As we have said what the future of psl will look like, what remains clear is the above action is needed if we are going to properly education and prepare our children for the future. A study conducted by the brookings institution, where i was before i came here estimates that there is a hundredyear group between the developing world and the developed world when it comes to academic achievement. 100 years, if were going to leap frog that divide, innovation is a necessity. If the results are as compelling as we think they will be, psl will serve as a model of high quality, low cost education that can be skilled not only in liberia or even in africa, and other countries around the world that are recovering from conflict and crisis. We look forward to harnessing opportunities like today, to share our story with colleagues and partners across the globe. I look forward to hearing your questions about our experience and forward to a lively and productive discussion. Thank you. [ applause ] thank you, minister werner, and let me also thank the panel you see before us who made time to join us for this conversation. Next to minister warner is a Senior Education specialists at the International Finance corporation. Which is the private sector arm of the world bank. There, he evaluates investments in private education companies. Before joining ifc, alejandro was a Senior Education specialist at the world bank, working with governments in higher education, science, technology and innovation. In the latin american and caribbean region. Before joining the world bank in 2006, he was president with the deutsche bank, working in east asia. Thanks for coming, alejandro. Amy black, were lucky to have her. Shes the executive Vice President of Global Education at results for development. Previously, miss black served as the Vice President of Growth Strategy and development for teach for all, which is a Global Network of more than 40 National Partner organizations that worked and improved Educational Opportunities for marginalized youth. Before helping establish teach for all, amy was the executive director of the washington, d. C. Region for teach for america. And before that she oversaw International Communications for the president s emergency plan for aids relief and spent two years as a president ial management fellow, rotating through the state department offices, including a sixmonth stint in south africa. Thank you, amy, for joining us. Last but not least, seth andrew, if you know seth, that is seth in a blue hat down there again. If you dont know him, seth is the founder of democracy builders and usually wears a yellow hat. Hes currently working with Bridge International academies to help governments launch more than 300 charterlike schools in liberia, kenya, uganda, nigeria and india. Mr. Andrew served as the Senior Adviser in the executive office of the president and led the education and Civic Technology portfolios, and he also served as a Senior Adviser to former u. S. Secretary of education arne duncan. He founded at served democracy prep, a net work of more than 20 public Charter Schools from harlem to here in washington, d. C. Thank you, panel, for joining us. Im going to give each of you just a few minutes to sort of give a reaction to minister werners keynote and your thoughts on the pls program. Seth, lets start with you. Sure, well, thank you everybody for joining us today. This is something that i have been so passionate about for the past four months. And i did not know how passionate i could be about something for four months until i met minister werner. We met at the end of january, early february, and he had this conversation with me where he was asking questions about the u. S. Charter second sector, and i said you are the minister of education in liberia and you understand this deeply, regarding the research. He understands me and i want to thank you for the opportunity to be in this space, to learn how to operate schools. In the United States we have been thinking about this for a slow and steady curve, in the u. S. , about 23 million children attend public Charter Schools, attended by open enrollment, but managed independently, by organizations that are not necessarily the government itself. So when minister warner was telling me about his vision for psl and what they started to build i immediately bought in. Because they talked about leveraging some of the best practices we use in the u. S. And some of liberias method, so having those two elements inspired me to dig into this work and realize we can rethink what Public Education is. So for me it was the urgency of the liberia case but really thinking about africa as a whole to inspire me to dig in. Because we have 8 million kids on this continent, waiting to be educated. Many are not in school at all, 330 million kids are in school but learning nothing, including many in liberia, having no outcomes whatsoever. So if we keep doing the same thing and expecting different results that is our definition of insanity, but in the case of liberia where theyre 100 years behind we cant just keep doing that. So the key thing i want to come back to is leap frogging. If liberia just takes an incremental approach and increases their budget by 5 or trains their teachers a little bit better, or trains the second grade curriculum a little bit, theyre not going to change what is possible for liberia kids, more than a million children. So for me the exciting thing is not changing things that are incremental, but bigger and bolder. We can look at whether its a charter or Partnership School or the definition, but the big idea is rethinking what the definition of Public Schools is and who manages the Public Schools. Is it a government or Partner Organization that may have different expertise that gives people the choice of the school they attend and the type of education they receive. For me, im excited about this work and look forward to digging in. Amy . Im excited to be here, the relatively new leader of the Education Team at the results for development. At results for development, we focus on healthy and educated people and really try to do that in the most systemic way possible through the partnerships that we pursue. We operate in the intersection between the Global Research available and trying to get that into the hands of the people on the ground so they can use it and we really position ourselves behind and beside local stakeholders to make sure theyre as effective as they can possibly wi possibly be with as little effort on their part to get that Global Information as possible. In that role we work very hard with leaders across all parts of a society. So particularly Public Sector leaders, which as we know are responsible for the vast majority of marginalized people in the world, and really value our relationships with pickup sectors. We also steward a 750 organization that works with innovations across the world, and ed tech, and Girls Education and Early Childhood that we work with them to help them answer research questions, get with them out in the broader landscape. What im really excited about as it pertains to this conversation, our work in the last two years, where we are working with private sector operators and particularly our work that we call adaptive learning. And so in ghana and sierra leone, we spent a lot of time with the team that uses Traditional Research methods, but close to the ground. The grass roots operators gets to the level, or a group of schools and says what are the Biggest Challenges you face next year or next month, what is your theory about what it takes to overcome those. And lets test and be much more successful by this time next year. And we think that that kind of research combined with of course the more rigorous longer term and more costly research that is absolutely needed is also a key part of seeing efforts like this be more and more successful. So were excited to have done that. In partnership with the foundation. And in ghana, where we really looked at what is what are the barriers of financing for operators like this. And looking at specific questions about what it is going to take to get our school kids more literate in the next few months, in this work we offer principles that we believe are important. It is important to have a shared set of goals across sectors that is everybody is oriented towards outcomes, it becomes more about what were doing there together. We think public with private, rather than public versus private is a good way of framing things. Private operators are across the world, a lot of questions we support our Public Sector partners to think about is how to leverage that in the most productive way. We believe government is in a stewardship role, that at the end of the day the government is responsible for outcomes especially for low income kids. That has to be taken into account when we consider the dynamics that are at play. There is a need for data at all levels of the system, you heard the minister talk about the importance of that here. Were striving to get the data at the grass roots level. And of course which you heard the minister talk about. Context matters so much. There is a unique history here and a unique history in every country. History matters. And i think time matters. I think a lot of times conversations only assume a year or two year horizon when we know these challenges need to take that horizon into account, but also five years, ten, 20 years and how do different players behave and respond when the context shifts as well. So these are things were excited to think about multiple players and development and im very excited to be a part of the conversation. Thank you, and i represent the ifc, the private sector arm of the world bank, and were very excited to be here, and thanks to minister warner for this very interesting presentation. We try to look for models of ifc that can be scaleable and that can be replicated in multiple countries around the world. And we try to learn from experiences and what has worked in one part of the world and take it to another part of the world, with our main focus on developing countries. And obviously, this is mainly in the context of the learning crisis that we are seeing, in particular, in many countries in south africa. There has been significant progress achieved over the past ten years or so in insuring that children are actually in school, and enrolled. Because as we saw in the statistics in liberia, the transition in secondary education remains a big issue for many south african countries. So in the context of the learning crisis, its really about what children learn. I think i heard mr. Warner talk about something that is very, very important. Starting with the basics, are the teachers actually in school, are they actually delivering the lessons that the children need . I mean, there are some studies by the world bank where we highlight there are significant times that are not the instruction of time in many countries in the region. And that is definitely a big issue. Well see some of the models that we talk about like Bridge International, and twice addressing the issue of accountability and making sure that at least the teacher is sitting in front of the students and delivering a lesson, for 50, 55 minutes if were talking about an hour lesson. Obviously in the context of this learning crisis it is important to have solutions and to really i mean, do what minister warner talked about both reforms. I mean, aiming to do things that maybe challenge a little bit. Obviously, we cannot but agree with the evidence that was approached which was mentioned and that is a very important point i think that was raised. I mean, in order for these experiences to be replicated and for other governments to work along these lines we really need to create the evidence. Im sure well come back to this in the conversation. But the evidence really about what works in education, i mean, were still delivering it and building it and the more we can go in this direction with impact studies that we really look into, into what works and what really brings the Student Outcomes and learning outs to the table, i think the better we will be. And im sure well talk a little bit about that. Everything that was presented is exciting and im happy to go deeper into some of these issues. For the private sector and education, its very important. That is one of the reasons why we supported Bridge International. Because i mean, we saw potential for innovation and for doing things differently in the education space. And obviously in that context were happy to see the bridge model can be applied in a Public Education context. And that is also part of our interests in this dialogue. Well, thank you, everyone. I wanted to start off with the Charter Schools conversation, in large part because its in the title of our event here today. Also part of our hash tag, which is hash tag developing world charters. Its a little problematic. The word charter is accessible to an american audience and helps the american audience what were talking about. But were not really talking about charters. Were talking about Partnership Schools. So my question is just to get this sort of fleshed out at the start what are some of the key and fundamental differences for an american audience to understand, between the Partnership Schools and american Charter Schools. And what might be the best language to talk about these Partnership Schools . And anyone can just jump on in and give their take. I know the minister has strong feelings about this. So i come from the american Charter School sector so ill just give you a couple of reasons i think this is happening, what is happening by our definition, theyre public buildings, publicly funded, open access and enrollment. No fees for students, whatsoever. The state standards have to be met. Theyre accountable for their results, in this case, to mr. Warner. That is what defines the Charter School here in the u. S. And the difference is a sub class of Charter Schools, one is in liberia, Partnership Schools are actually public workers. They are on the public payroll. Theyre nongovernment by default. That changes the dynamic, there are places in the United States where the Charter School teachers are members of the union as well. There are places where the districts are the authorizer, i think the charter is the apt term for this. I understand amys point, this is sort of private versus public, this is an important one. It really is an important one. What the operators in liberia are doing is partnering with the government to deliver better results. In the case of liberia, there is an mou between the operator and government. That is a function between the charter, the authorizing document that stipulates what the operators will provide and how they provide it and what theyre expected to deliver. At the ends of the day they are charters. And at the spectrum of charters, between those and the Public Employees to those that are much further in the other spectrum where they are the equivalent of closer to voucher, where the government is basically just doing a transfer of funds to attend the private school or another type of school. And so there is a whole spectrum that are met here. And to me the definition of charter are publicly accountable. I will say about bridge, the bulk of their schools, nearly 500 around the world. Are these low fee private schools. That still means its 7 a month. Whats so profound about minister werners work is they are zero fee schools. Theres none of these fees that in the developing world you have to understand, traditional Public Schools charge these fees. So traditional Public School are also not free in much of the developing world. And yet minister werners made a system of schools that are won by private or nongovernmental organizations that are actually free. Our notion that free equals public is not the right notion for africa where that is not actually generally truly but in the psl program, Charter Schools are actually free for students and parents. The paradigm shifts a little bit, but i still think charter is the right term. So thank you, seth. Let me just Say Something that, just to add to what seth just said. With the exception of maybe singapore and vietnam, i dont know any country that educates poor children with perfection. Not the United States, not the uk. If the u. S. Government would deliver perfect Public Schools, you would have no need for Charter Schools. If the uk government could do similarly, there would be no need for the academies in the uk. What that tells me is that governments are failing to educate poor children. And there is a need for partnership with the private sector. We are not educating our children just for the Public Sector only. Few of them get into the Public Sector. And depending which president is in power,s you can have that workforce reduced. So we are educating majority of our kids for the private sector. For the jobs of today and the jobs of tomorrow. All of the more reason why the private sector needs to be called to get involved in how we educate our children. So this is why in liberia we chose the word partnership. There are things government does very well. Policy platforms. Regulations. Education as the public good. Those things government can do well. But daytoday management assessments, outcomes, systems of accountability, government doesnt do as well as the private sector does. So we partner with private providers to strengthen government where it is weakest, if you like. Thats the essence of the partnership with us. Im interested, i want to just follow up on that. Anyone can answer. Seth, we can hear briefly about bridge. But across the psl participants, we have eight different providers. So im wondering, what do what are some specific things, some specific aspects of the models that they bring that the Public Schools would not be able to develop on their own. You know, where is the bring that can be achieved through the psl program . Seth, you want to describe bridge . Briefly . So i think less about bridge and more about the psl program. One of them is curriculum. This seems like a relatively small thing and it should be a fundamentalism of schools, you know, curriculum, what we teach. When you walk in into a Government School in liberia, you dont find curriculum. In fact, you walk in, on the chalk board, it says 2015 at the top because they havent had chalk or anybody write on the chalk board since 2015. So you have the stark understanding that learning is just not happening in a lot of these places. So the operators that minister werner brought in are bringing with them curriculum. More has a specific curriculum, bridge is a specific curriculum. Each one of these operators brings their curriculum that has very concrete goals and then is aligned to the Liberian National standards. So in the case of bridge, where. In the case of bridge where most of our schools in bridge we had a Curriculum Team working in liberia to align the curriculum specifically to librarian curriculum. But curriculum is one of the biggest elements. And then the second and georgia luds to this, but i think its important to think about is the government is not usually thought of as the leader in technology. I just left the Obama Administration where we spent a lot of time thinking about technology in government. I can still tell you we were way behind where the private sector was in thinking about technology. Most of us dont use government tech in our daily lives, we use private sector tech in our daily lives. What bridge has done is taken that curriculum from the best practices in the developed world in american Charter Schools and delivered it through a very low tech solution, a really cheap e reader, black and white tablet that costs 50 to manufacture in china, you get content that is the same content as kids might be getting in washington, d. C. Or boston or cambridge, massachusetts, and theyre getting it on a 2 g signal in black and white in a rural librarian classroom. That is a thing that the government of liberia hadnt figured out how to do yet and the private sector has figured out how to do, the ngos have been more aggressive in adopting technology into their curriculum. This has potential to be a leapfrogging change. I think another important element, i mean, theres some incentive to measure. Once you bring the private sector in, i mean, very quickly there will be questions. I mean, is this better than what we had before. No . And that brings a clear incentive to start measuring things to developing either a pilot like the one thats currently under way or eventually a proper fullfledged impact evaluations. It might seem very obvious but it does bring very quickly the measurement part of it and something that really helps, you know, bring the discussion to a new level because theres evidence thats being created and thats really whats happening our starting to happen in the librarian case. You bring up evidence and so i have sort of two questions, bite at the first one that youre interested in taking. The first is just across the developing world, what evidence have we seen for these Public Private partnerships, particularly in education for low income students . And also in terms of the psl, what specifically, mr. Werner, have you done to bake into the program a way to measure its outcomes thats, you know, rigorous and that can provide evidence to other countries and to the citizens of liberia . Yeah, i mean, i can talk a little bit about i mean, about some of the studies that have taken place. First of all, theres different types of ppps. Obviously typically, i mean, there are these two axis, who operates and who finances, it would be public or private and depending on this obviously theres different combinations that can take place. In most cases, i mean, one of the i mean, of the ppps that people talk about is vouchers and vouchers have been tested in different context. We are quite familiar at the world bank with experiencing chile, for instance, where there was a Voucher Program that was implemented and multiple efforts to assess the efficacy of that Voucher Program and what happened, i mean, in most of the measurements is that, i mean, the evidence was not conclusive to be i mean, to be really clear. I mean, the different studies were suggesting different things. Typically it comes down to the question i mean, are we measuring things all else equal basically . Are we really taking into account the observable variables that can affect Student Learning outcomes. That was obviously, you know, part of the discussion that we had in chile. I think in the case of Charter Schools im sure im sure seth and amy would have specific evidence about the u. S. , i think thats more robust studies and maybe more conclusive, at least in some of the cases theres very clear clear evidence that this has worked. In the context of developing countries we have examples like colombia with the concession schools which are quite relevant and with interesting with interesting findings. You know, in support of potential, you know, good performance by private schools, you about the question s i mean, its really the fact that private schools are performing well compared to all the Public Schools, sufficient evidence that ppps will work. I mean, i think theres other elements in the discussion as well. I mean, one of them has to do with i mean, are we talking about the same things . In particular in the african context i have had conversations with a number of ministers of education and the question is, i mean, are we really talking about Public Finance kicking into the ppp model. In some cases we are and in some cases we might not be looking at the same type of model. So really setting up the definition of what were talking about is quite important. And theres the second element of whether i mean, the moment you have Public Finance kicking in, working together with the private sector, whether youre really able to build that system that will work from a governance, money perspective, operational perspective and so on and so forth which is what minister werner is currently dealing with. So obviously in the context of developing countries to be frank, i mean, we need to create this evidence. We dont have that many experiences. The ones that we have like in the case of vouchers sometimes bring inconclusive answers and but theres i mean, theres eagerness and willingness to go down that route by many, many governments in developing countries and creating that evidence with a specific examples, pilots, measuring those pilots is really what i think will help build a little bit the knowledge about this space. So what in liberia we immediately thought of and did with the support of the International Community was and now led by the center for Global Development and innovation for poverty action, ipa, is that we needed a rigorous evaluation of the program to generate the evidence to inform policy in terms of whether or not we should start or continue and at what scale and what the gaps would be in terms of what were looking at. So we commission a randomized control trial and the best line is completed by august, we should have the may line i think sometimes during the end of august, the midline report should be made available to inform the world about many of the things that we are looking for in terms of evidence. I must admit that our city was commissioned for three years and so we still have some way to go yet to know whether or not this program is giving us what we want to do. Let me remind you that its only in the second year that we are trying to reach the remoteest part of liberia. We also have to examine whether or not psa works in those context where you have too many rivers that children have to canoe up a river or, as you saw in the short video clip, walk across sticks to get to schools and what the implications are for a country with seven months of [ inaudible ] during which time children dont have access at all to some of the school infrastructure. I dont have much to add except to say it is true, we just need more evidence, we need more time and we need resources to go into evaluation and there is a lot of discussion in the Global Community about that so i do think that thats on its way. We are excited and results for development is not by no means the only organization doing this type of work but in the meantime there are kids that are in School Every Day and those practitioners need to know roughly where they are. So were excited about the the less rigorous but more immediate research that can be done to create trajectories where operators actually know that they are on the right path. And theres, you know, a bottoms up and top down approach to this and i think it will be very important to see in the coming years, months and years if these sorts of engagements are getting the results, but theres theres an opportunity to do both, to do the summit of assessments, to look back and see what we think has happened, but to simultaneously be preparing operators for hopefully a positive outcome by making sure that they have the tools and resources inhouse, like at the level of a school to be thinking the way that researchers think and to be answering their own questions. So theres a growing need for that as well and i think both of these pieces can come together to hopefully get results, and not just in private settings but also in public settings. This is the kind of work that we as educators need to be doing everywhere, here in the u. S. And in liberia and everywhere else. So i think theres another body of work that is also burgeoning that can compliment these larger studies as well. So i have two somewhat contradictory thoughts that i admit are contradictory but i think are both important in this context. The first is that we have started already to see results and so i think your point the difference really is between formative and sum testify. So some of this Research Needs to be formative, we need to be making decisions tomorrow about the lesson we tried yesterday that didnt work and fix it tomorrow. Thats research. Thats not a full rct, but Good Research we need to identify how to get a teacher have better practice tomorrow and thats important. Mr. Werner said four of the providers released their results. Bridge had four times as many students in the treatment schools than in the control to meet the reading benchmarks. That was after four months of instruction. Youre starting to see outcomes that are already there on the short term. For bridge and kenya where you have ten years of data youre seeing in 83 of the counties in which we operate across the whole country the outcomes on the end of school exam, the eighth grade exam for Elementary School students at bridge are outperforming the counties even though bridge students are dramatically poorer. But the contradictory part i wanted to say is that at some stage we have to actually say to ourselves that we cannot wait for evidence to make change. We cannot stop in a place like liberia where we have a million kids, hundreds of thousands were getting zero education every day and say lets wait for the results for a couple of years and maybe then we will figure it out. We are talking about kids who are learning nothing every single day. Kids who are opting out of school in many cases completely and then to say were going to wait for a five year rct until we scale up is a mistake. Im thrilled we have the rct. I think the instinct to say we need rigorous evidence is right but that doesnt mean we should stop moving. My boss used to say one of the funny things at the u. S. Department of education is our highest standard for evidence was the investing in innovation fund, but we gave away billions of dollars for the funds that were not about innovation, but in innovation its the one thing we should expect no evidence because it should be innovative. It should be the thing that we havent tried before. It should be the thing that is bold and new and different. Even though we should be informed by evidence and best practices in other countries and different context it doesnt mean we should be paralyzed by waiting for the results of longterm studies before we say these kids need to have a great kindergarten next year or tomorrow. So schooling certainly can benefit from some innovation, it also benefits from funding. For western audience i want to talk for a moment about the cost differential. In american Public Schools we spend about 12 grand a year per kid and in librarian Public Schools they spend 50 per pupil per year which is a 240 multiple, right, 240 times less. So first of all, how do you do that . I just cant even get my head around it. And i have a couple other questions that maybe we can follow up on that about how can western companies certainly for profit or not for profit just survive in such a low cost environment . So let me start so the others will follow. Let me give you the context for liberia. Last year our education budget was around 41 million u. S. Dollars. Of that 41 million, 35 million for payroll. So you see where im going with that, right . So much of the 50 that nat spoke about is dedicated to payroll. You actually have nothing for what in essence contributes to quality, teacher training, textbooks and all of these things. So that is the backdrop to the 50. So when we initiate a psl, we sought blended funding, we went to private philanthropy foundations and then we said, look, what if you were to give an extra 50 to this operators making 100, right, but the 50 you give them will be for innovations to meet what we set out together that we wanted to achieve. In year two because we are consolidating to areas that are more difficult than year one, we are saying 60. But you still see that that is not expansive enough to cover the cost. What this tells me is all the noise about for profit, i dont know who is making profit in this environment. So i just wanted to lay that context for you to get a sense of the struggle we are in with the operators to make sure that children have access to equal quality education. So i can say for bridge that they are not making a profit in liberia, which is the reality of working in this context, but partially because the scale is not big enough. Right now bridge is educating about 9,000 students in liberia in year one of the pilot. Part of the reason the scale is so exciting to me is that it took democracy prep my Charter School network in the u. S. 13 years to get to that number of students and bridge and minister werner have gotten to serve nearly 40,000 students in year one. So the scale is big but needs to be bigger to get those cost functions down. For bridge one of those cost functions is developing, designing the curriculum and technology and hardware and software thats used in classrooms. Once thats built the marginal cost for adding each individual student is almost zero. There is a model to get to break even in a place like liberia but thats going to require hundreds of thousands of students educated in this method. You have to get to a big scale for the cost to get down to that number thats close to 40 or 50 per student. Its possible but still a long way off. Right now bridge and psl are relying on philanthropy and incredibly generous and thoughtful donors who are recognizing for an investment of close to 50 a student you can educate an entire student for a year to get a better education than they were getting before. For our western audience one other contextual thing thats helpful is for bridge and all the operators theyre using government teachers. These are the same teachers that were there last year for the most part. Theyve been retrained, evaluated differently, given different curriculum but the payroll costs have stayed the same. If you think about 50 a student a year, thats about 2,000 for a classroom of 40 kids per classroom per year, the wage bill of that is covering about 150 a month so lets call that 1,500 a year leaving only 500 total per classroom for materials, textbooks, technology and everything else. That sounds like a small number in a western context, but as i told you the tablet that the teacher gets is 50. So this is doable. I want people to walk away understanding that this is absolutely possible. Weve shown it at scale in kenya, were starting to get there in liberia but it requires a lot more students to be in systems like this rather than it being an incredibly intensive commitment of resources up front before you get to the scale point where it is actually sustainable. I think thats a very interesting feature of the bridge model. It was designed from inception to really operate at the scale and i think obviously that scale is required for the model to work, but definitely every single element of that from the tablet to the way, you know, that the materials, textbooks, et cetera are designed, i mean, it starts off with a view of bringing costs down to the really to a really minimum. I think thats what made the model quite attractive to us when we looked into it. Let me give you one more example because i think its helpful. In the u. S. Context we think about technology and the way that its tran forming american schools. So in liberia they dont have the resources for the infrastructure, for example, for science labs, the School Buildings are bare bones, most dont have power, youre lucky if you have 22 g, but there are tools we are using in the developed world like Virtual Reality, tools that cost 50 is a headset that you can see a Virtual Reality science lab. So in the developed world we can imagine 50 per student to do a science lab in Virtual Reality. In the developed world we cant because those that math doesnt add up, but you can get a cardboard version of the same thing for 3. So now if im thinking about taking the same thing, im bringing the quality down a little bit, but the content thats being delivered to my students in washington, d. C. Is actually going to be the same exact content adds can be delivered to kids in liberia with a 3 piece of cardboard and the phone that the principal is already getting to download those lesson plans. So its about thinking differently about how we spend money and what we spend money on and not letting this incredibly impossible challenge which is saying 50 per student per year, how is that possible stop us from being innovative. Thats where the new thinking thats not just doing it the same way weve done and expecting different results will hopefully get us a different set of results. I want to ask a question about low cost private schools here. Weve been talking about psl schools which are Public Schools, theyre paid for, but in the developing world low cost private schools are a big thing, right . I think in america we think of Public Schools as dominating the scene. So, first of all, can these sort of partnerships work with low cost private schools and can you give me a sense of how big low cost private schools cover the market in some develop countries . So by one estimate in africa less than 50 of students are attending Government Schools already. And where are those students . They are either a good chunk out of school but they are also in these low pheaa forwardable private schools. When we think of private school in the u. S. And in the developed world its a different context. The idea of spending 7 a month and getting a better education as is happening in kenya for 100,000 students across the Bridge Network that is a different way to think about what education is and it is a way thats saying to families who might be living on 2 a day, so im not talking about wealthy families, im talking about families living on 2 a day per capita and being able to spend what ends up being about 10 of their income on their childs education, thats a choice theyre making and one we should admire and talk about as an aspirational opportunity for those families that they havent had and theyre making rational choices. One of the things that frustrates me in this gate is when critics of affordable private schools or psl is saying those families dont know what theyre doing. Im arguing that the families knows better than any of us very often in in room and certainly in washington, d. C. In monrovia or nairobi what is best for their family and theyre choosing across africa almost 50 of them to not go to the government run schools and instead to go to these others schools. I think we should be more respectful and thoughtful about what that really is saying about the choices that they have as families. I think low cost private schools are a reality in many developing countries. Thats really the case in sub Saharan Africa but in other parts of the world as well. In the case of kenya and, seth, you may have the latest statistics but i think i read some time ago that we were talking between 500,000 to 1 Million Students enrolled in low cost private schools across the country and about half of that only in nairobi. So its really a big thing and its a reality. I mean, why do parents decide to send children to low cost private schools . We have talked a little bit about the hidden cost, in some cases we find in Public Education in some environments. I mean, the maybe proximity, ability to vote at the end of the day in terms of decisions, maybe lack of capacity in some Public Schools as well, but this is our reality and it cannot go unnoticed. I think theres a need for governments also to realize that this is a sector that deserves attention and that ultimately you have to regulate it probably in a different way as how you regulate the traditional mainstream education sector, otherwise it will be it will be very difficult for some of these schools just to operate. And again, theres many, many children that are already enrolled in these schools. Just to bring more nuance to the context, most of these arent in chain schools, most of them arent run by big operators, but mom and pop schools, which i think there are different policy implications for the thousands and thousands of Community Schools that are literally run by a Single Family for any number of reasons, right. So i think as governments wrestle with the complexity of what they are responsible for stewarding in their national context, a lot of this conversation is about about operators, either local or or international, that are coming in, but in this case in Real Partnership with the government many governments are facing as we as many of us know, you know, thousands of individual operators and not with a lot of visibility into whats actually happening there, even though theyre ultimately responsible for the education of those kids. So i think there are lots of different angles when you it is why getting precise about the definition of what kinds of operators youre talking about can have different implications for the policy outcomes that a government might choose. So mr. Werner, in a moment i will turn it over to the audience for some questions, but my question is with the elections coming up what are your concerns for the sustainability of the program and, you know, what is your hope for the program in 2025 . So let me tell you what we are excited about first. We are excited that [ inaudible ] is ending a twoyear term and adhering to constitution. We are excited that for the First Time Since 1944 a living president would hand over six to seven hours per day. While we didnt factor in was school the world food program, School Feeding which is what we do want to support our farmers to grow more so that we can feed our own people. What were finding from year one is as a result of the extended instructional time were finding that some children are hungry and so in year two we will build into the program an amount, i think its around one point something million for School Feeding to be after to cover for this. I have had the opportunity to talk to some of my counterparts across the region from rue wanda and elsewhere to ask how to deal with the problem of School Feeding and essentially its by going to parents and saying, look, if your child was at home what would he or she be eating . If you have that, bring it to school and the government can add to it to make sure that a child has food for the extended instructional time. So thats a draw back that we are hoping to fix in year two. Question right here, front row. Thank you. My name is Annette Magee johnson. I have to get some background because i am here in my own capacity but i lived i was born in liberia and i lived and worked there from 2010 to 2013 at the ministry of justice setting up the first child justice program. And so i come with that context in mind. And a couple of questions slash concerns. We will have to make it one question. Given the issue of accessibility in liberia, i heard mention of the fact that for such a program to work there is a need for government involvement, but most of the Government Programs are funded by outside sources. The government has not shown a commitment to children in its budget based on what weve heard here today. So im wondering how do you all envision such a program being scaled in liberia to where all children do have access, even leaving aside that there is a lot of controversy in liberia if this should be the way to go, how do you give access to all children . Youre only reaching 7 now, how are you going to get to 100 because now were leaving one problem and were creating inequalities because we are not accessing everyone. Like you said, the roads, you cant get to most of the country, so im really interested in how were going to create a balanced system that reaches all children. So the problem of scale. So and i thank you and good to see you again. The government has a commitment to children. It is not what it should be, but the government is investing in the children of liberia. The question youve asked about scale is something that really i think about every night. If you wantedtcj the radical gee werner, i dream of a future, say, in five to ten years when kids in Elementary School can read and write critically well alongside their interNational Partners. To do that i believe that the best way to go is to leverage the best of private providers to help the government achieve this. Left to itself, the government doesnt have the capacity like other governments to achieve that. At the same time you need to consider which is what has happened to me all the feedback from the International Community, from the domestic audience in terms of this idea is new. You want to be cautious in terms of how you approach scale. So thats where we are, cautiously approaching scale, which is what seth said earlier. We are weighing the evidence to inform decisionmaking, but we realize that as a friend once said children in liberia dont have the luxury of time to wait. The urgency is now. If we do not do anything radical to change the status quo we will in the american way of putting it leave too many children behind. So you make a valid point about scale, its something we are considering. Id like to thank minister werner. Im afraid we are out of time. Thank also the panelists and please feel free to have the discussion go on online for those of you watching at home, for those of you who are here we have a reception following immediately in the hall. Join me in thanking our guests. [ applause ] sunday on indepth, american educator, tea party activist, author and attorney chris ann hall is our guest. For Different Reasons everybody has the idea that the federal government is out of control. And then the most asked question i get as we teach, what do you suppose that is . What do you do about it . Have we been teaching the constitution properly . For the last 150 years. We would know what to do. Shes the author of several books including essential stories for junior patriots in defense of liberty and sovereign duty. During our live threehour conversation we will be taking your phone calls, tweets and facebook questions. Watch in depth with chris ann hall, sunday, live from noon to 3 00 p. M. Eastern on book tv on cspan 2. I was