The RAMP initiative in Jordan – developing the tools to support reflective practice

• In Event: Measuring regional progress toward early grade reading and mathematics targets in a national application of LQAS as part of the RAMP Initiative in Jordan

Proposal

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and United Kingdom’s Agency for International Development (UKAID) are co-funding the Early Grade Reading and Mathematics Initiative (RAMP) in Jordan. Central to the RAMP approach is developing reflective practice at all levels of the education system, which includes developing the tools and capabilities of the players at each level to (a) assess progress and (b) to respond in a timely fashion to the needs identified by the assessments.
To ensure the maximum efficacy of ministry-managed programs or donor-funded projects, information from routine monitoring should be used to revise project approaches and/or provide additional support where programs may be less successful than hoped. However, program and project evaluation can be quite costly and thus may be conducted infrequently. Projects routinely rely on baseline studies at the beginning of the activity, with later midterm or end-of-project evaluations. After evaluations are conducted, results are often not available until months later, resulting in actions meant to address identified problems not being implemented for a considerable amount of time. In addition, traditional evaluation approaches provide aggregate findings, making it difficult to target assistance where it is most needed. Lot Quality Assurance Sampling (LQAS) is a technique that allows routine monitoring at a relatively low cost, that can be conducted quickly, and that can provide disaggregated results, thereby providing actionable data needed to target more needy areas or institutions in a timely manner.
The LQAS technique was first developed in the 1920s in the manufacturing industry as a way to monitor the quality of production. A small sample of items was randomly selected from each production lot and examined for any imperfections. If the number of defective items was greater than a pre-set threshold level, then the lot was rejected (Robertson et al., 1997, p. 199). Rejected lots were then “examined more closely and either repaired or discarded” (MEASURE Evaluation Project, 1998, p. 5). Application of the method has since spread far beyond manufacturing into other domains, for example, the LQAS concept has been adapted for use in the health sector and has, more recently, been introduced in the education sector as a way of monitoring program performance and identifying areas that need additional support.
The RAMP initiative is employing the LQAS methodology as an efficient and cost effective mechanism for regular monitoring and evaluation by both national and regional education structures. In light of its efficiency and because of the nature of the information that it provides the LQAS based assessments will play an important role in providing national sand regional structures with the information that they need to monitor and support progress toward the national benchmarks. By incorporating the methodologies into the Ministry of Education’s (MoE) existing monitoring and evaluation activities, the MoE is strengthening its capacity to respond quickly to needs that are identified on a local level. This, in turn, allows the MoE to deploy its limited resources most strategically in areas that have been identified as being in greatest need.

Author

• Allyson Wainer, US Agency for International Development (USAID)