Schooling and learning deficits: A simple unified measurement framework

Abstract

There exists no unified measurement framework that encompasses and integrates schooling and learning deficits—arguably the two most important education challenges in most developing countries. This article offers a methodology that fills this gap. Using the notions of age-appropriate grade, actual grade, and effective grade for a school-age child, we develop an integrated framework offering a range of schooling, learning, and education deprivation measures that also build in distributional considerations. The article illustrates the value added of the measurement framework for education policy and evaluation with an application to data for India and Kenya.