EQUIP2 Final Report.pdf - Education Policy Data Center

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EQUIP2 Leader Award Final Report
The implications of the work are simple, but hard to put into practice.
The lessons are: you need to take a long-term view of reform efforts; you
can’t be assured that government partners will be consistent; if you pay
attention to opportunities, there are ways to build on work that has
stalled. But other than the obvious conclusion that USAID should avoid
short-term projects, and should be promoting more flexible, open-ended,
longer-term kinds of initiatives, it’s hard to say how it should be used.
That would be a radical change for USAID, and difficult to negotiate.
Even the most compelling publication might be muted because it’s difficult
to put into practice.
Additionally, others felt that education systems reform work did not go as
far as it could have, particularly in terms of its potential to influence project
design. Nevertheless, the research was considered to be successful in terms
of engaging the international development community on the complex and
difficult topic of long-term education reform. By highlighting the reality of
social and institutional change over time and focusing on the challenges of
scaling up, institutionalization, sustainability, and impact, the research sought
to directly challenge the perennial quest for a “silver bullet.”
Monitoring and Evaluation
From the beginning, EQUIP2 was involved with monitoring and evaluation
work in regards to its own associate awards. For example, in 2004, the Leader
award produced a handbook detailing education indicators commonly used
by international organizations to characterize education systems and to
monitor progress towards increased educational attainment at the primary
school level. The goal of the handbook was to assist USAID missions to
better understand which indicators were most useful for monitoring their
programs and help understand reasonable rates and patterns of change. The
handbook became a practical and often-used tool for USAID practitioners.
Over the years, EQUIP2’s monitoring and evaluation component evolved
along with the work on education system reform. In November 2006,
EQUIP2 presented a paper at the American Evaluation Association’s
Annual Conference entitled, Education Reform and Evaluation: Can
program evaluations contribute to changes in policy and programs? The
paper identified the insights gained from conducting evaluations specific to
policy reform, and discussed how these insights could inform the design of
future education projects and their subsequent evaluations. This work led
to the development of an institutional evaluation tool that was applied to
the EQUIP2 associate award in Jordan and Liberia. The approach used a
baseline and regular monitoring to measure systemic movement towards the
goals and objectives of the project, paying particular attention to changes in