ideas worth spreading but how do you
know which ideas are worth spreading to
your hometown imagine that you’re the
mayor of your city and you have two
priority areas you’re worried about kids
in the schools who have fallen behind
and you want to find ways to help them
catch up and they’re also members of the
community who are having a hard time
taking basic steps to stay healthy how
can you best support them so where do
you start
often our first instinct is to look at
what worked somewhere else so your team
starts combing through evidence from
scientific experiments that can pinpoint
whether a specific program that was
tried somewhere else worked or not but
then you face a problem because how can
you actually know whether something that
worked somewhere else is also going to
work for you to answer this I used to
ask the wrong questions
it’s tempting to focus on geography was
it tested nearby but how near is near
enough if it was tested in the same
state the same country the same
continent and then the arguments start
can you really teach math here the way
they do in Singapore and can you really
import health programs from Scandinavia
and expect the same effect and these
kinds of questions often lead to a
hopeless conclusion because nowhere is
identical to here and so what do we do
do we have to start from scratch every
time can we not learn from ideas that
were effective in other places these are
exactly the kinds of questions that I
focus on and my work at the poverty
action lab at MIT and the question
shouldn’t be where did this idea come
from but why did it work what underlying
lesson about human behavior did
idea teach us and what can we learn not
about place but about people so instead
of asking what’s the same about place I
want you to ask what’s the same about
people so let’s take a step back and
unpack two examples that dramatically
improve lives and examine how human
behavior changed there’s an economist at
the University of Chicago named Richard
Saylor and he just want a Nobel Prize
for his work on human behavior one of
his biggest insights people like to
procrastinate I can see a lot of guilty
smiles right now you’re remembering
something that you’ve put off yesterday
but this isn’t just trivial when we’re
thinking about how we can tackle some of
the most important problems in the world
procrastination can really matter it can
mean the difference between a healthy
child and a very sick child
we know that immunization is one of the
most cost effective ways to save a
child’s life but even in areas of the
world where immunizations are available
and free many children aren’t being
fully immunized let’s go to you die poor
it’s in the Indian state of Rajasthan
and when our lab was working there a
decade ago more than 95% of the children
we’re missing some or all of their shots
why was it because they were too
expensive no the shots were available
and free and when children did get sick
their parents would take them to the
doctor and spend a lot of money on
medical care so maybe it was a different
problem maybe it was going from
intention to action finding the time to
walk to the clinic with your child to
have them immunized and maybe when you
get there the nurse is out so you have
to come back another day and you decide
you know I’ll get around to this soon
but you put it off and eventually you
miss the window and if that’s what’s
actually going on maybe we can give you
a reason to stop putting it
so we tested this idea with a randomized
evaluation which is the same method that
we use in experiments to test new
medical treatments and we worked with a
local NGO called save a Mandir and
they’ve been working a new type or for
50 years and really understand the local
context so we worked with them to test
this idea across 134 villages in Udaipur
and in the first group of villages we
held these reoccurring immunization
camps where parents could bring their
children to be immunized and they knew a
nurse was going to be there that day and
then in the second group of villages we
held those same immunization camps but
also gave parents one kilo of lentils
every time they came and then the third
group of villages was the comparison
group where it was business as usual now
if I really don’t want to get my child
immunized a small bag of lentils isn’t
going to change my mind but if I just
need a reason to remember to go to the
clinic today instead of tomorrow I might
remember to do that to get that kilo of
lentils and it turned out that that
worked really well so let’s see what
happens so here we have the
business-as-usual group we’re only six
percent of the children in those
villages were fully immunized and when
we added these reoccurring immunization
camps it really helped but when we also
added the lentils more than six times as
many children we’re fully immunized and
you might be thinking well that it’s
expensive to hand out these lentils can
we do this all the time and it turned
out that actually the cost per shot in
the villages where we handed out the
lentils was lower because those
immunization camps were so much busier
so we found a way to overcome the
problem of procrastination it’s a very
simple problem but one that all of us
share and six times as many children
were fully immunized now how would you
decide whether to try this incentives
for immunization idea somewhere new what
questions would you ask
and the question isn’t do people also
eat lentils there we can swap out the
lentils for something else and in fact
we’re currently trying this with mobile
phone credits in Pakistan and with a
local favorite peanut butter and cereal
and Sierra Leone the question is just do
parents need a reason to bring their
child to be immunized today instead of
tomorrow and this works for more than
just immunizations whether it’s a nudge
to quit smoking or to remember to treat
your water so it’s safe to drink we’ve
repeatedly seen that tiny incentives can
really help people act today instead of
tomorrow all around the world so when we
focus on this underlying reason for why
behavior changed it can help us better
answer that question of whether a
program might work for you wherever you
are so now let’s look at another example
where there was a common problem across
very different contexts but we found a
solution that held we learn best when
we’re taught at our level that sounds
obvious right but it’s not the reality
that a lot of students face in school so
here’s an example of what 10th grade
kids learn in school and now I’m going
to show you some problems that we’ve
seen students in those same tenth grade
classrooms not be able to solve now I
want you to imagine sitting in a
classroom day after day trying to tackle
multivariable algebra when you’re still
struggling with basic condition and some
people have looked at this gap and drawn
a pretty hopeless conclusion and said
you know if the children are so far
behind in high school is it just too
late and the truth is that most of the
programs that we’ve really rigorously
evaluated for vulnerable students in
high school don’t move the needle in
terms of learning but what if the
problem isn’t that students who have
fallen so far behind can’t learn and
it’s not that teachers and struggling
classrooms
can’t teach it’s a mismatch it’s a
mismatch between what students are
expected to learn and the level that
they’re actually at and it turns out
that there’s straightforward effective
ways to address that mismatch for this
one we’re going to come back here to
Boston and there’s a school over on
Commonwealth Avenue called matched
public charter school and it’s been
recognized as one of the top high
schools in the country one of their
founding principles is individualized
tutoring so students spend time every
day either individually or in small
groups with a tutor working on skills at
their own level and at their own pace
and when we learned about this approach
we were really interested in it because
we’ve seen similar approaches work in
other parts of the world and a concept
we call teaching at the right level so
for example in Kenya we found that when
students were grouped into classes based
on their initial learning levels instead
of by age or by grade students in all of
the groups learned better and in India
we’ve worked with a prominent NGO called
Pratham and they enlist local volunteers
to tutor students young children in
basic reading and math skills and kids
who had fallen years behind the
curriculum started catching up very
quickly and we worked with them to test
this in different settings rural and
urban during the school day during
summer break with volunteers with
government teachers and consistently the
results were positive across the board
so when our Education lab colleagues
were working with the Chicago Public
Schools they thought that a version of
teaching at the right level might be a
good fit for helping high school boys
who had fallen years behind the
curriculum because there was a common
problem across Kenya in India and
Chicago students were attending school
they had fallen far behind but their
teachers faced incentives to teach
grade-level material not the basic
skills that some of their students were
still struggling with so Chicago decided
to try out
matches tartar and targeted tutoring
model together with a nonprofit called
sog innovations and they provided two on
one intensive tutoring in math for boys
who had fallen years behind in math and
it really worked the boys who receive
tutoring learned almost two extra years
of math in a single year and it wasn’t
just math that improved they were less
likely to fail other courses and less
likely to be arrested for a violent
crime and these are some of the biggest
learning gains that we’ve seen for
programs aimed at helping disadvantaged
high school students so across Kenya and
India Chicago and Boston when students
were taught at their level they caught
up that’s not groundbreaking but it’s
simple and it’s effective and we’ve seen
it work across radically different
contexts now am I suggesting that every
single school in the world should
implement a targeted tutoring program
not necessarily but if we get stuck on
location and think that Chicago can’t
learn from India we’ll miss out on a lot
of great ideas and if we focus so much
on location and think that you know oh
food and sentence weren’t practical in
Pakistan and lunch halls weren’t the
right food in Sierra Leone we’d miss out
on the chance to try something that did
make sense locally like mobile phone
credits or peanut butter there are a lot
of ideas worth spreading and when we ask
why people change their behavior why
they act the way they do we can look
across superficial differences in
geography and learn from surprising
places and we can learn from surprising
places when we stop focusing too much on
place and start thinking about people
thank you
[Applause]
know which ideas are worth spreading to
your hometown imagine that you’re the
mayor of your city and you have two
priority areas you’re worried about kids
in the schools who have fallen behind
and you want to find ways to help them
catch up and they’re also members of the
community who are having a hard time
taking basic steps to stay healthy how
can you best support them so where do
you start
often our first instinct is to look at
what worked somewhere else so your team
starts combing through evidence from
scientific experiments that can pinpoint
whether a specific program that was
tried somewhere else worked or not but
then you face a problem because how can
you actually know whether something that
worked somewhere else is also going to
work for you to answer this I used to
ask the wrong questions
it’s tempting to focus on geography was
it tested nearby but how near is near
enough if it was tested in the same
state the same country the same
continent and then the arguments start
can you really teach math here the way
they do in Singapore and can you really
import health programs from Scandinavia
and expect the same effect and these
kinds of questions often lead to a
hopeless conclusion because nowhere is
identical to here and so what do we do
do we have to start from scratch every
time can we not learn from ideas that
were effective in other places these are
exactly the kinds of questions that I
focus on and my work at the poverty
action lab at MIT and the question
shouldn’t be where did this idea come
from but why did it work what underlying
lesson about human behavior did
idea teach us and what can we learn not
about place but about people so instead
of asking what’s the same about place I
want you to ask what’s the same about
people so let’s take a step back and
unpack two examples that dramatically
improve lives and examine how human
behavior changed there’s an economist at
the University of Chicago named Richard
Saylor and he just want a Nobel Prize
for his work on human behavior one of
his biggest insights people like to
procrastinate I can see a lot of guilty
smiles right now you’re remembering
something that you’ve put off yesterday
but this isn’t just trivial when we’re
thinking about how we can tackle some of
the most important problems in the world
procrastination can really matter it can
mean the difference between a healthy
child and a very sick child
we know that immunization is one of the
most cost effective ways to save a
child’s life but even in areas of the
world where immunizations are available
and free many children aren’t being
fully immunized let’s go to you die poor
it’s in the Indian state of Rajasthan
and when our lab was working there a
decade ago more than 95% of the children
we’re missing some or all of their shots
why was it because they were too
expensive no the shots were available
and free and when children did get sick
their parents would take them to the
doctor and spend a lot of money on
medical care so maybe it was a different
problem maybe it was going from
intention to action finding the time to
walk to the clinic with your child to
have them immunized and maybe when you
get there the nurse is out so you have
to come back another day and you decide
you know I’ll get around to this soon
but you put it off and eventually you
miss the window and if that’s what’s
actually going on maybe we can give you
a reason to stop putting it
so we tested this idea with a randomized
evaluation which is the same method that
we use in experiments to test new
medical treatments and we worked with a
local NGO called save a Mandir and
they’ve been working a new type or for
50 years and really understand the local
context so we worked with them to test
this idea across 134 villages in Udaipur
and in the first group of villages we
held these reoccurring immunization
camps where parents could bring their
children to be immunized and they knew a
nurse was going to be there that day and
then in the second group of villages we
held those same immunization camps but
also gave parents one kilo of lentils
every time they came and then the third
group of villages was the comparison
group where it was business as usual now
if I really don’t want to get my child
immunized a small bag of lentils isn’t
going to change my mind but if I just
need a reason to remember to go to the
clinic today instead of tomorrow I might
remember to do that to get that kilo of
lentils and it turned out that that
worked really well so let’s see what
happens so here we have the
business-as-usual group we’re only six
percent of the children in those
villages were fully immunized and when
we added these reoccurring immunization
camps it really helped but when we also
added the lentils more than six times as
many children we’re fully immunized and
you might be thinking well that it’s
expensive to hand out these lentils can
we do this all the time and it turned
out that actually the cost per shot in
the villages where we handed out the
lentils was lower because those
immunization camps were so much busier
so we found a way to overcome the
problem of procrastination it’s a very
simple problem but one that all of us
share and six times as many children
were fully immunized now how would you
decide whether to try this incentives
for immunization idea somewhere new what
questions would you ask
and the question isn’t do people also
eat lentils there we can swap out the
lentils for something else and in fact
we’re currently trying this with mobile
phone credits in Pakistan and with a
local favorite peanut butter and cereal
and Sierra Leone the question is just do
parents need a reason to bring their
child to be immunized today instead of
tomorrow and this works for more than
just immunizations whether it’s a nudge
to quit smoking or to remember to treat
your water so it’s safe to drink we’ve
repeatedly seen that tiny incentives can
really help people act today instead of
tomorrow all around the world so when we
focus on this underlying reason for why
behavior changed it can help us better
answer that question of whether a
program might work for you wherever you
are so now let’s look at another example
where there was a common problem across
very different contexts but we found a
solution that held we learn best when
we’re taught at our level that sounds
obvious right but it’s not the reality
that a lot of students face in school so
here’s an example of what 10th grade
kids learn in school and now I’m going
to show you some problems that we’ve
seen students in those same tenth grade
classrooms not be able to solve now I
want you to imagine sitting in a
classroom day after day trying to tackle
multivariable algebra when you’re still
struggling with basic condition and some
people have looked at this gap and drawn
a pretty hopeless conclusion and said
you know if the children are so far
behind in high school is it just too
late and the truth is that most of the
programs that we’ve really rigorously
evaluated for vulnerable students in
high school don’t move the needle in
terms of learning but what if the
problem isn’t that students who have
fallen so far behind can’t learn and
it’s not that teachers and struggling
classrooms
can’t teach it’s a mismatch it’s a
mismatch between what students are
expected to learn and the level that
they’re actually at and it turns out
that there’s straightforward effective
ways to address that mismatch for this
one we’re going to come back here to
Boston and there’s a school over on
Commonwealth Avenue called matched
public charter school and it’s been
recognized as one of the top high
schools in the country one of their
founding principles is individualized
tutoring so students spend time every
day either individually or in small
groups with a tutor working on skills at
their own level and at their own pace
and when we learned about this approach
we were really interested in it because
we’ve seen similar approaches work in
other parts of the world and a concept
we call teaching at the right level so
for example in Kenya we found that when
students were grouped into classes based
on their initial learning levels instead
of by age or by grade students in all of
the groups learned better and in India
we’ve worked with a prominent NGO called
Pratham and they enlist local volunteers
to tutor students young children in
basic reading and math skills and kids
who had fallen years behind the
curriculum started catching up very
quickly and we worked with them to test
this in different settings rural and
urban during the school day during
summer break with volunteers with
government teachers and consistently the
results were positive across the board
so when our Education lab colleagues
were working with the Chicago Public
Schools they thought that a version of
teaching at the right level might be a
good fit for helping high school boys
who had fallen years behind the
curriculum because there was a common
problem across Kenya in India and
Chicago students were attending school
they had fallen far behind but their
teachers faced incentives to teach
grade-level material not the basic
skills that some of their students were
still struggling with so Chicago decided
to try out
matches tartar and targeted tutoring
model together with a nonprofit called
sog innovations and they provided two on
one intensive tutoring in math for boys
who had fallen years behind in math and
it really worked the boys who receive
tutoring learned almost two extra years
of math in a single year and it wasn’t
just math that improved they were less
likely to fail other courses and less
likely to be arrested for a violent
crime and these are some of the biggest
learning gains that we’ve seen for
programs aimed at helping disadvantaged
high school students so across Kenya and
India Chicago and Boston when students
were taught at their level they caught
up that’s not groundbreaking but it’s
simple and it’s effective and we’ve seen
it work across radically different
contexts now am I suggesting that every
single school in the world should
implement a targeted tutoring program
not necessarily but if we get stuck on
location and think that Chicago can’t
learn from India we’ll miss out on a lot
of great ideas and if we focus so much
on location and think that you know oh
food and sentence weren’t practical in
Pakistan and lunch halls weren’t the
right food in Sierra Leone we’d miss out
on the chance to try something that did
make sense locally like mobile phone
credits or peanut butter there are a lot
of ideas worth spreading and when we ask
why people change their behavior why
they act the way they do we can look
across superficial differences in
geography and learn from surprising
places and we can learn from surprising
places when we stop focusing too much on
place and start thinking about people
thank you
[Applause]
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