The Impact of Diagnostic Feedback to Teachers on Student Learning: Experimental Evidence from India

While the use of high-stakes testing in education is increasingly common, it is also controversial as opponents argue that these tests lead to distortion of teacher activity towards the test and away from activities that are not incentivized. An alternate use of tests that is suggested as a way of improving student learning outcomes is to use lowstakes tests to provide teachers with detailed diagnostic feedback on how their students are performing. It is posited that simply providing this information can help improve teaching practices, teacher goal setting, and student learning outcomes (without the distortions induced by high-stakes testing). We present experimental evidence on the impact of a program that provided low-stakes diagnostic tests and feedback and lowstakes monitoring of classroom processes across a representative set of schools in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. We find that the teachers in the treatment schools appear to be working harder when measured by observers in the classroom, but that the students in these schools do no better on independent tests than students in schools that did not receive the program. This suggests that though teachers in the program worked harder while being observed, there was no impact of the feedback and monitoring on student learning outcomes. JEL Classification: I21, O15