USAID Read Liberia Activity Report on District Education Monitoring
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Read Liberia Activity District Education Monitoring Approach (DEMA) with Group Administered Literacy Assessment (GALA) Report submitted to USAID: August 7, 2020 Reviewed by USAID: August 26, 2020 Revised report submitted to USAID: October 16, 2020 Approved by USAID: December 16, 2020 This document was produced for review by the United States Agency for International Development It was prepared by RTI International for the USAID | Liberia Read Liberia Activity. USAID|Liberia Read Liberia Activity District Education Monitoring Approach (DEMA) with Group Administered Literacy Assessment (GALA) Period of Performance: September 25, 2017–September 24, 2022 Contract Number: AID-669-C-17-00003 Prepared for USAID|Liberia United States Agency for International Development Office of Acquisition and Assistance ATTN: Contracting Officer’s Representative 502 Benson Street 1000 Monrovia 10 Liberia Prepared by RTI International 3040 Cornwallis Road Post Office Box 12194 Research Triangle Park, NC 27709-2194 RTI International is a trade name of Research Triangle Institute. RTI and the RTI logo are U.S. registered trademarks of Research Triangle Institute This document is made possible by the support of the American people through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID.) The authors’ views expressed in this report do not necessarily reflect the views of USAID or the United States Government. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The authors wish to acknowledge the significant contributions of all who made these efforts possible. We are thankful for the support of staff from the USAID Liberia Mission and the Ministry of Education (MOE). The assessment would not have been possible without the hard work on the part of MOE County and District Education Officers who conducted data collection in sampled schools. We also appreciate the participating schools for their time and support. USAID Read Liberia, District Education Monitoring Approach with Group Administered Literacy Assessment i TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ............................................................................................................. I LIST OF TABLES ...................................................................................................................... II ACRONYMS AND ABBREVIATIONS ..................................................................................... III EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ........................................................................................................... 1 1 INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................... 2 2 OVERVIEW OF THE ASSESSMENT APPROACH ..................................................... 2 3 METHODOLOGY .......................................................................................................... 3 4 SAMPLING FRAMEWORK........................................................................................... 4 5 INSTRUMENTS ............................................................................................................. 5 6 DATA COLLECTION AND SAMPLING ....................................................................... 6 7 FINDINGS AND RECOMMENDATIONS ...................................................................... 7 7.1 Teacher and School Results ............................................................................. 7 7.1.1 School Inputs ......................................................................................... 9 7.1.2 Student Materials ................................................................................. 10 7.2 Group Administered Literacy Assessment (GALA) Results ............................ 11 8 CHALLENGES AND LESSONS LEARNED .............................................................. 14 9 CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS .......................................................... 15 10 APPENDIX ................................................................................................................... 18 10.1 DEMA/GALA School Instruments .................................................................... 18 10.2 DEMA/GALA Summary Sheets ....................................................................... 29 LIST OF TABLES Table 1. DEMA/GALA performance indicators (9 DEMA indicators shaded blue, 6 student-level indicators [including GALA] shaded green) ................................ 3 Table 2. Intended and realized sample .......................................................................... 5 Table 3. District summary analysis ................................................................................. 6 Table 4. Number and percent of school assessed ......................................................... 7 Table 5. Summary of students assessed, by county ...................................................... 7 Table 6. Percent of schools meeting minimum performance standards, per county..... 8 Table 7. Percent of schools meeting minimum performance standards, per county..... 9 Table 8. Student exercise book availability county summary performance ................. 10 Table 9. Student exercise book availability, district summary performance ................ 11 Table 10. GALA county performance summary ............................................................. 12 Table 11. GALA district-level performance ..................................................................... 12 USAID Read Liberia, District Education Monitoring Approach with Group Administered Literacy Assessment ii ACRONYMS AND ABBREVIATIONS CEO County Education Officer DEMA District Education Monitoring Approach DEO District Education Officer G2 Grade 2 GALA Group Administered Learning Assessment LQAS Lot Quality Assurance Sampling ME&L Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning MOE Ministry of Education USAID United States Agency for International Development USAID Read Liberia, District Education Monitoring Approach with Group Administered Literacy Assessment iii EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The District Education Monitoring Approach (DEMA)/Group Administered Literacy Assessment (GALA) was conducted in 25 districts in the six Read Liberia-supported counties—Bong, Grand Bassa, Lofa, Margibi, Montserrado, and Nimba. Overall, 59 schools were visited, 694 students were assessed, 59 grade 2 (G2) teachers were observed teaching, and 59 principals were interviewed. Data were collected by District Education Officers (DEOs) on teacher practices, school inputs, and reading achievement. Teacher practices. Results from the teacher observation showed that none of the six counties met all six performance standards for teacher practices (mentioned below). Lofa and Magribi Counties each met two of the standards. Nimba met one of the standards. Data were only collected for one of the standards for Grand Bassa and Montserrado. The county summary analysis for the four counties submitting data showed that (1) 53% of schools met the standard for student engagement, (2) 86% for time on task, (3) 51% for teaching reading, (4) 71% for teacher preparedness, (5) 15% for teacher expectations, and (6) 33% for exercise book inventory feedback. School inputs. Students’ attendance performance for the six counties also fell below the minimum performance standard for 33% of schools. Among the six counties, only Lofa achieved the minimum required performance standard of 80% of its schools having at least 80% of registered students in class on the day of the DEMA/GALA. For the other three indicators, all six counties fell below the minimum required performance standard of 80% of schools. GALA. The minimum performance standard for the GALA indicators was 80% of items answered correctly. This is a standard threshold used in lot quality assurance sampling (LQAS) efforts in education programs in similar settings.1 Only 10% of schools met the standard for familiar words, 8% for sentence completion, 5% for sentence comprehension, and 3% Note: Since the LQAS methodology for sentence–picture match. At the county level, the employed called for reaching 16 schools in each county for a total of average score for familiar words was 5.8 (the 96 schools and 96 teachers, these minimum standard is 8.0); 2.8 for sentence–picture results can only be considered match (minimum standard 5.0), 12.9 for sentence indicative of the situation. comprehension (minimum standard 16.0), and 3.6 for sentence comprehension (minimum standard 6.0). Overall findings from the DEMA/GALA accentuate the need for continuous and increased engagement with school authorities and county education officers to address the gaps in teacher performance and low student reading performance. A first step in identifying challenges facing schools and student learning outcomes is for the Ministry of Education to institutionalize DEMA/GALA as a standard classification tool for teacher practices and school inputs. It could also be used as a formative assessment tool, periodically used to evaluate students’ reading performance. Identifying challenges can spark meaningful dialogue with relevant stakeholders and promote action to improve teacher practices and reading performance. This document lays out the overview of the assessment approach, including the methodology, sampling framework, and data collection. It then discusses the findings and recommendations for using the findings to elicit system improvement and sustainability of the DEMA/GALA efforts. 1 RTI International. (2013). Report on the pilot application of lot quality assurance sampling (LQAS)