I recently ran across a charity called Project AK-47 that declares: Over 100,000 kids are carrying machine guns in the armies of Southeast Asia. Instead of walking to school, they march to war. Instead of playing, they train to kill. If we don’t intervene, most of these children will be soldiers for at least 7…
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Volunteer tutoring program
Via Joanne Jacobs: a large randomized controlled trial found statistically effects of a volunteer tutoring program on reading skills. The effect size (.1-.16 standard deviations on 3 measures; insignificant on one other – see pg 13 of the full study) is in the same ballpark as the effect observed in a recent study of vouchers…
Positive but underwhelming voucher study
The third-year evaluation of a federally funded school voucher program in D.C. has recently been released (H/T Joanne Jacobs). We’ve written before that past voucher studies have shown extremely underwhelming (if any) effects, and at first glance this report would seem to be a change in the pattern: “The evaluation found that the OSP improved…
KIPP and self-selection
The Knowledge is Power Program is one of our current recommended charities, but I think that Sarah Mosle’s critique in Slate is very much worth keeping in mind. Mosle writes: While KIPP does have outreach efforts to broaden its applicant pool, only the most determined parents are likely to respond to … sign KIPP’s demanding…
Mistargeted microfinance?
There are many studies attempting to gauge microloans’ impact on borrowers, but most suffer from the problem of selection bias: by comparing participants and non-participants, they may be picking up other differences between these groups (for example, people who participate in microloan programs may be wealthier to begin with, so a study showing that they…
PRI and Bloggingheads
A couple of recent web/media appearances: Last week I appeared briefly on PRI’s The World – link here. A recent Bloggingheads between Tyler Cowen and Peter Singer includes an interesting exchange about charity effectiveness including the advantages of GiveWell’s approach, the limits of the “overhead expense ratio,” and Prof. Cowen’s preferred alternative of sending money…