Non-Reallocation Resource Isolation

In Simple Words

Institutional rigidity that prevents principals from moving teachers or rooms between grades works like fixed structural bulkheads on a ship, keeping resources locked strictly within designated compartments so that experimental changes in one room cannot spill over into another.

Research question

Field experiments evaluating grade-specific school interventions risk downward bias if school administrators reallocate existing school resources or teachers away from control grades to supplement treated grades.

Participants

N = 122 municipal primary schools in Vadodara and 77 schools in Mumbai, India.

Study Design

Institutional analysis of administrative rule constraints governing class assignments, automatic student promotion, and rigid teacher allocation in public primary schools.

Results

Zero observed instances of teacher or student reassignment across standards occurred because automatic promotion rules and fixed classroom counts removed principal discretion, ensuring control grades remained valid comparison groups.

Takeaway

Verify that rigid institutional rules prevent administrative resource shifts across grades before utilizing alternate grade levels within the same school as valid experimental control groups.

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