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News, ideas, and analysis from J-PAL staff and affiliated professors. Subscribe to our newsletter to receive monthly email updates.

Child writing in his notebook at school

Setting an early foundation for children’s learning: using insights from cost-effectiveness analysis to inform decisions

Ensuring children have strong basic skills in reading, writing, and mathematics – together known as foundational literacy and numeracy – is considered critical for their future academic success and later life outcomes. While research has generated insights on what works for improving literacy and...
Students in Ghana engage with hands-on activities designed to support foundational learning.

From training to impact: Strengthening foundational learning in Ghana

This is the second blog post in a series highlighting how UNICEF and J-PAL are working together to strengthen evidence use in education. The first blog post reflected on insights from global experts working to adapt and scale evidence-based education programs. This post builds on the first by...
Woman giving numeracy books on International Literacy Day in Mozambique

Affiliate Spotlight: Selim Gulesci on addressing gender-based violence in Mozambican schools

In May 2025, J-PAL Africa invited LinkedIn readers to submit questions about a recent randomized evaluation on preventing gender-based violence in Mozambican schools, coauthored by J-PAL affiliated researcher Selim Gulesci. In this blog post, Selim responds to five questions from readers, sharing...
Four people sitting at a table

Where evidence meets practice: Inside UNICEF and J-PAL’s FLN Academy 3.0

FLN Academy 3.0 is a collaboration between UNICEF and J-PAL that supports UNICEF regional and country offices and local stakeholders in applying evidence-based solutions to advance foundational literacy and numeracy.
A group of students with a banner that reads: "Center for Education, Identity and Social Justice"

Ideas to Implementation: How a research partnership can drive STEM equity and youth development in the City of Los Angeles

By
  • Darnell G. Cole
  • Mabel Eunice Hernandez
  • Milie Majumder
  • Ting-Han Chang
  • Christopher Newman
  • Ramon Covarrubias
  • Daniel Millán
J-PAL staff, the Youth Development Department (YDD) of the City of Los Angeles, and the University of Southern California (USC) explore how they established their research collaboration for evaluating the Student Engagement, Exploration, and Development in STEM (SEEDS) program.
Danila Sera

Affiliate Spotlight: Danila Serra on women in science and leadership

In celebration of the International Day of Women and Girls in Science on February 11, 2025, J-PAL Africa hosted an Ask Me Anything session with J-PAL affiliated professor Danila Serra on X, formerly Twitter. Below, we share highlights from this engaging conversation about her research on gender...
Three people stand around a white board and point to it.

J-PAL LAC at 15: Expanding ECD programs through evidence in the region

As we mark fifteen years of J-PAL’s Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) office, we are recapping key milestones and sharing what we have learned in a new blog series. The series highlights lessons from working with those who make our mission a reality: our donors, implementing partners, J-PAL...
Children in a Classroom

Field notes: The power of community partnerships for scaling learning interventions

By
The world has made tremendous progress in getting children into schools. Not so much in making them learn. In India, which has one of the biggest school systems in the world, nearly every eligible child receives primary education. But almost half of 10-year-olds struggle to read a simple story by...