What Mt. Lebanon can learn from school projects in poor countries

NPR’s Planet Money podcast is always fascinating, but Tuesday’s episode, “Poor Economics”, ended with an unexpected bonus: a short discussion with MIT economists about whether investments in school facilities pay off in poor countries. Because our community, though far from poor, is about to devote a giant chunk of its increasingly scarce educational dollars to a single facilities project – the high-school renovation – it’s worth considering what we can learn from the economists.

Research in the developed world suggests that investments in school facilities have little effect on student outcomes. Once you place students in a building that’s safe, sound, and adequate to the needs of learning, spending more on that building doesn’t seem to make much difference. Diminishing returns set in quickly.

But what about building a school facility for a poor community that doesn’t already have one? Surely, that would be the community’s best way of helping its students, right?

That’s what the economists were asked. Their answer might surprise you.

The scenario was this: There’s a community in Haiti that the Planet Money crew visited while covering the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake. While there, they met the principal for the local school district and learned that his students didn’t have a school building. They had most of their classes behind a church, under a palm-frond roof, next to an outhouse. When it rained, they got wet. They lacked textbooks and other necessities. It was pretty miserable.

When the Planet Money listeners heard about the students’ plight, many sent donations, which soon reached $3000. The principal, overjoyed with the unexpectedly large outpouring, said he wanted to build a school with the funds, and one listener, a construction expert, flew to Haiti and said he would help build it. But, when he got there, he discovered that it would cost closer to $80,000 to build. (It seems that estimating construction projects is hard everywhere.)

At this point some other listeners wrote to Planet Money and asked, If the $80,000 could be raised, would it be best spent on a building – or other things? And that’s what the economists were asked. Here’s the exchange. (If you’re listening to the episode, it starts about 21 minutes in.)

Planet Money: The principal and the community say they want a school [building], so I’m inclined to trust them. Do you have any advice on this kind of thing? Let’s say they had $80 thousand. Is building a school the right thing? Is there any advice you can give us?

Abhijit Banerjee (MIT economist): Generally the evidence from economics is that brick-and-mortar expenses are less useful than improving teacher quality. There’s a fair amount of evidence that seems to suggest that, even with fairly poor infrastructure, if you had a teacher who was excited about teaching, and the materials were appropriate to the children, and the teacher focused on teaching the child in his class instead of the “ideal child” who doesn’t actually exist there, I think you get a very good education, even when the infrastructure is extremely poor. That’s my two-minute summary of the literature.

Esther Duflo (MIT economist): One thing to add, we’ve worked with a lot of schools, in Kenya in particular, and people always want [buildings], especially principals. From their own point of view, that makes a lot of sense: they have to work in the schools, which are often quite unpleasant... People [in leadership positions] always like to provide bricks and mortar because it’s something that looks tangible. The people who receive the bricks and mortar are very happy, [too]... but things that are more like “the software” – what are you going to teach, how are you going to teach it, who is going to teach it, what are the incentives that are given to the parents, to the teachers, to the students – are actually probably cheaper [ways] to achieve [results], but less photogenic. Which is why it’s important to focus on what’s going to make the most difference, without being influenced by whether it’s the most photogenic.

(The whole episode, by the way, is fascinating. If you have 30 minutes, it’s worth a listen.)

Of course, schools in Haiti and Kenya are not schools in Mt. Lebanon. But the interview offers two insights that are probably general enough to apply everywhere, even here.

First, when it comes to education, the diminishing returns from investments in bricks and mortar seem to diminish rapidly. In some cases, even if you get the money to go from zero to a new school building, you’re better off, educationally, not buying the building but investing the funds in other things.

Second, the payoffs for decision-makers and students are different. Community leaders have a strong incentive to invest the community’s resources in things that are highly visible, such as bricks and mortar, but those investments are not necessarily the best way to help students.

Now, I’m not suggesting that our planned renovation is just eye candy. But I do think it’s worth asking whether we wouldn’t be better off with a less-expensive renovation that conserves more of our educational funding for education. The evidence seems to point toward the conclusion that you get the best education when you spend on buildings what you must – but no more – and save the rest of your funding for things that help students more.

When it comes to school buildings, apparently, less is more.