3.3.3 Teacher behavior

3.3.3 Teacher behavior

An important component of school management is teacher accountability and its effects on teacher behavior. Note that the changes in the composition of teachers in PSL schools confound any effect on teacher behavior.

As mentioned above, teachers in PSL schools are drawn from the pool of unionized civil servants with lifetime appointments and are paid directly by the Liberian government. In theory, private contractors have limited authority to request teacher reassignments and no authority to promote or dismiss civil service teachers. Thus, a central hypothesis underlying the PSL program is that contractors can hold teachers accountable through monitoring and support, rather than rewards and threats.

To study teacher behavior, we conducted unannounced spot checks of teacher attendance and collected student reports of teacher behavior (see Panels A/B in Table 8). Also, during these spot checks we used the Stallings classroom observation instrument to study teacher time use and classroom management (see Panel C in Table 8).

Teachers in PSL schools are 20 percentage points (p-value < 0.001) more likely to be in school during a spot check (from a base of 40%) and the unconditional probability of a teacher being in a classroom increases by 15 percentage points (p-value < 0.001). Our spot checks align with student reports on teacher behavior. According to students, teachers in PSL schools are 7.4 percentage points (p-value < 0.001) less likely to have missed school the previous week.

Classroom observations also show changes in teacher behavior and pedagogical practices. First, teachers in PSL schools are 16 percentage points (p-value < 0.001) more likely to be engaging in either active instruction (e.g., teacher engaging students through lecture or discussion) or passive instruction (e.g., students working in their seat while the teacher monitors progress) and 27 percentage points (p-value < 0.001) less likely to be off-task.44 Although these are considerable improvements, the treatment group is still far off the Stallings et al. (2014) good practice benchmark of 85 percent of total class time used for instruction, and below the average time spent on instruction across five countries in Latin America (Bruns & Luque, 2014). Additionally, teachers are 6.6 percentage points (p-value .0098) less likely to hit students in PSL schools.

44See Stallings, Knight, and Markham (2014) for more details on how active and passive instruction, as well as time off-task and student engagement, are coded.

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