How Do We Know How Many Children Are Not Learning?

june 12,2013

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Watch Luis Crouch explain how economists calculate learning outcomes In the 5th lesson of our EdBits series, education expert Luis Crouch explains how education economists quantify the total number of children that are in school but not learning.  The notion that there are about 250 million children in school “learning nothing or very little” has become general knowledge in the education community.  The Global Education Firstmovement, the Global Monitoring Report, and the Brookings Institution’s Global Compact on Learning have come up with similar estimates. But how do we really know how many children are not learning? Did someone go out and test all children? And how little do they really learn? Luis says this is what economists call a “stylized” fact: a fact that has a solid base in analysis, is derived from analytical short-cuts, and is useful for policy discussions and raising awareness. But it may not be exactly right. Luis explains that to get to this number, education economists first figure out a percentage of kids who are not likely to be  learning much.  Then  they apply that percentage to the total number of kids in school. Eventually, this number can be applied to the number of childrennot in school to get an idea of the total shortfall of learning. Watch the video to see how the math works