I have incurred enormous intellectual and personal debts over the eight years since 2004 that I have worked on the current volume. I give thanks to six groups of people.
First, I have to thank the many coauthors of papers I have written in that time. Deon Filmer is the person with whom I really started writing about education and from whom I have learned the most over the years. In addition I have written papers on education with Amanda Beatty, on overambitious curricula and on learning progress over time; Amer Hasan, on educational goals; Rinku Murgai, on teacher compensation in India; Varad Pande, on local government and schooling in India; and Martina Viarengo, on high performers and “superstar” economics and on inequality in performance across schools in the public and private sector. In addition, I count as coauthors the team that produced the World Development Report 2004, “Making Services Work for the Poor”: Junaid Ahmad, Shanta Devarajan, Jeffrey Hammer, Deon Filmer, Ritva Reinikka, Shekhar Shah, Agnes Soucat, Nazmul Chaudhury, and Steven Commins.
Second, many people have directly helped in the production of this book. Duriya Farooqi helped me complete an earlier book. Amanda Beatty read and edited nearly every chapter of the current book. Emily Hurst, my daughter-in-law, provided the illustrations that begin each chapter. Laura Carter worked as a researcher in India and managed the ASER (Annual Status of Education) data. Isaac Pritchett, my son, helped with the references. Bruce Ross-Larson, editor and writing counselor extraordinaire, raised his subtle eyebrows sufficiently to convince me that my “almost there” manuscript was not so. I thank John Osterman, who handles publications at the Center for Global Development, for steering the book toward production, and the Brookings Institution Press publications staff for their professional support in getting the book into print and out into the world.
Third, this book stands on the shoulders of giants of research into education. Of course, thanking them does not imply that they would agree with me or even that I agree with them, just that reading these writers’ original research has taught me something: Tahir Andrabi, Paul Atherton, Abhijit Banerjee, Rukmini Banerji, Michael Clemens, Jishnu Das, Sonalde Desai, Esther Duflo, Paul Glewwe, Eric Hanushek, Asim Khwaja, Geeta Kingdon, Michael Kremer, Marlene Lockheed, Karthik Muralidharan, Ritva Reinikka, Justin Sandefeur, V. Sundararaman, and Ludger Woessmann.
This book contains new data. The task of creating new data is thankless so I want to thank those that perform this difficult but essential role. The data produced by Pratham-ASER in India represent a huge leap in scale and conceptualization of assessing performance, and Madhav Chavan, Rukmini Banerji, and Wilima Wadhwa deserve kudos for pioneering this new approach, which has spread. In addition, the company Educational Initiatives and its managing director, Sridhar Rajagopalan, have also pioneered in the development and application of testing learning and capabilities in India.
Fourth, I thank Nancy Birdsall at CGD for her support of this book and of my earlier work. She has been enormously supportive of my work on education and has provided incisive commentary and nudges to finish this book.
Fifth, I thank my own life teachers. Choosing just one at each level of my education I would like to thank Mr. Martin (grade six); Ms. McCabe (grade eight); Gail Young (grade eleven); James MacDonald, at Brigham Young University; Jerry Hausman, at MIT; Larry Summers, postgraduate work; and Keith Warner, my tennis teacher. Perhaps none of them meant to teach me what I learned from them, but the unexpected insight is the beauty of education.
Last, my family. Grandpa Hayward's favorite excuse for getting out and getting away with doing just about anything was that he “had to see a man about a horse.” My own version of Grandpa's excuse is “I am working on my book.” Since I worked some at home I am sure if my children were to imitate “working on a book,” they would stare blankly into space or pace around in pajamas or mutter to themselves “yes, that's it” at inopportune moments. I have tried, unsuccessfully, to convince them all that taking a break from working on a book is working on a book.
My wife, Diane, has a doctorate in political science, has taught choral music in American and international schools, has been a school administrator, and is a teacher in the truest and noblest sense of the calling. I would not be the same without her and our thirty happy years of marriage—and neither would the book.