Innovation and Evaluation Hub: A Model for Sub-National Governments in Argentina

This partnership will create an Innovation and Evaluation Hub in the Ministry of Education of the Province of Salta, Argentina. The hub will have two main goals: (a) to leverage the recent adoption of national student assessments at the end of primary and secondary school to conduct randomized evaluations of education interventions every year; and (b) to provide technical assistance to the Ministry to collect student and school performance data and link these data to the datasets from the national assessments and other sub-national ministries. The team plans to carry out a demonstration randomized evaluation in the fall of 2017 to establish the proof of concept. They will then support the hub in developing its research agenda in early 2018 and pursue it during the rest of the year. Finally, they will assist the ministry in launching its first request for proposals in 2019. The team hopes the hub can serve as a model for other Argentine provinces.