From article:
[T]here's an inherent trade-off here. The strongest case you could make is that some countries, unable to fund their education systems, face a difficult choice. They can provide a high-quality education to whomever they can afford to reach but leave out those they cannot afford to reach. Or they can increase the number of students they reach through a cheaper, Bridge-style model, but by compromising the quality of that education.
"I've seen this argument play out between big names in education research next to people who would do this in the developing world," Justin Sandefur, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development and an expert on aid effectiveness and education in the developing world, told me.
In Liberia, there are still about half a million children out of school, and about 21 percent of children don't complete primary education. For these kids, is even rote learning better than no learning at all?
"There are all these concerns in the US about teaching to the test and how horrible that would be," Sandefur says, but then you'll hear "some of the people in the developing world saying the best thing that could happen in our classrooms would be that somebody comes in and teaches to the test. The teachers are asleep; they're not there. So I think you do have to put it in perspective."
Read full article here.
