Understanding education policy preferences: Survey experiments with policymakers in 35 developing countries
通过对35个低收入和中等收入国家931名高级政府官员的调查实验，发现国家政策制定者对基础学习技能的重视程度较低，其偏好受教育目标、对现状的认知及干预措施有效性信念的影响，且与捐助者议程存在偏差。
Despite rapid increases in global access to primary school, average learning outcomes in many low and middle income countries remain low. International actors are increasingly focused on a policy agenda prioritizing foundational learning, measured by test scores in primary school. However, international actors have limited capacity to impose this agenda, which ultimately depends on national decision-makers. In this paper we present new evidence on the priorities and views of these national decision-makers. We report on a new survey of 931 senior government officials working on education in 35 low- and middle-income countries. We show with survey experiments that national policymakers place relatively low value on action to address foundational skills. We explain variation in preferences among policymakers as a function of three possible factors: different objectives for education (e.g., learning versus socialization), different beliefs about the state of the world (e.g., enrollment and learning levels), and different beliefs about the effectiveness of specific interventions. Misalignment with donor agendas is evident in all three dimensions. We also show experimentally that beliefs do respond to new evidence on the effectiveness of interventions.