Presentation by Samuel Berlinski, Inter-American Development Bank

Chaired by Francisco Ferreira, Deputy Chief Economist, LCRCE

Abstract:
Latin American and Caribbean countries fare poorly in terms of student learning. To improve educational achievement, countries in the region are contemplating a variety of potential interventions. In particular, many are vigorously pushing programs to increase students’ access to computers in schools as well as at home.  We provide a comprehensive review of the quantitative literature of ICT in education covering studies in economics, education, and psychology. Interventions with well defined pedagogically objectives tend to find benefits in standardized achievement results. Public programs that tend to increases access or resources leaving schools and families ample freedom to define the use of technology are usually associated with no or even negative outcomes. We also measure the costs of two alternative deployments of computers in schools in Latin America. A one-to-one model implemented with the distribution of laptops to students and teachers and a one-to-many model implemented through computer labs.  The costs of these interventions are substantial and significantly higher in the one-to-one model. Moreover, the variance of costs across countries is substantially lower than the variance of educational expenditure per-student. In particular, the burden of heavy ICT investment will be larger for poorer countries.  Thus, only unexpectedly large benefits will justify investment in the more costly technologies.

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