The Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) is a global research center working to reduce poverty by ensuring that policy is informed by scientific evidence. Anchored by a network of more than 1,000 researchers at universities around the world, J-PAL conducts randomized impact evaluations to answer critical questions in the fight against poverty.
The Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) is a global research center working to reduce poverty by ensuring that policy is informed by scientific evidence. Anchored by a network of more than 1,000 researchers at universities around the world, J-PAL conducts randomized impact evaluations to answer critical questions in the fight against poverty.
Our affiliated professors are based at over 120 universities and conduct randomized evaluations around the world to design, evaluate, and improve programs and policies aimed at reducing poverty. They set their own research agendas, raise funds to support their evaluations, and work with J-PAL staff on research, policy outreach, and training.
Our research, policy, and training work is fundamentally better when it is informed by a broad range of perspectives.
TalkingPoints is an interactive personalized messaging platform aimed at increasing communication between parents and teachers, increasing parents’ engagement in their children’s schooling and improving children’s executive functioning skill in grade 3. TalkingPoints has two components. TalkingPoints Multilingual Messaging facilitates communication between teachers and parents by providing an easy-to-use platform that promotes two-way translated messages in over 30 languages. TalkingPoints Coach provides parents tips for communicating with teachers and other information about their children’s schooling. Messages between parents and teachers come directly from TalkingPoints. Both local and federal law requires schools to provide programing intended to promote parental engagement in their children’s education. We assess the effectiveness of TalkingPoints in a school-based randomized field experiment over one school year in 50–65 schools using objective measures of parent communication with schools, engagement with children and children’s executive functioning.