In low-income countries, primary school students often fall far below grade level and primary dropout rates remain high. Further, in some countries, educators encourage their weaker students to drop out before reaching the end of primary school. These educators hope to avoid the negative attention that authorities direct to a school when its students perform poorly on the primary leaving exams that governments use to certify primary completion and eligibility for secondary school. We report the results of an experiment in rural Uganda that sought to reduce dropout rates in grade six and seven by offering bonus payments to grade six teachers that rewarded each teacher for the performance of each of her students relative to comparable students in other schools. Teachers responded to this Pay for Percentile (PFP) incentive system in ways that raised attendance rates two school years later from .56 to .60. These attendance gains were driven primarily by outcomes in treatment schools that provide textbooks for grade six math students, where two-year attendance rates rose from .57 to .64. In these same schools, students whose initial skills levels prepared them to use grade six math texts enjoyed significant gains in math achievement. We find little evidence that PFP improved attendance or achievement in schools without books even though PFP had the same impact on reported teacher effort in schools with and without books. We conjecture that teacher effort and books are complements in education production and document several results that are consistent with this hypothesis.

中文翻译：

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农村小学的教育者激励和教育分流

在低收入国家，小学生的成绩往往远低于年级水平，小学辍学率仍然很高。此外，在一些国家，教育工作者鼓励较弱的学生在小学毕业前辍学。这些教育工作者希望避免当学校的学生在政府用来证明小学完成和中学资格的小学毕业考试中表现不佳时，当局对学校的负面关注。我们报告了在乌干达农村进行的一项实验的结果，该实验旨在通过向六年级教师提供奖金来降低六年级和七年级的辍学率，奖励每位教师的每个学生相对于其他学校可比学生的表现。教师对这种按百分比付费 (PFP​​) 奖励制度的反应是将两年后的出勤率从 0.56 提高到 0.60。这些出勤率的增长主要是由为六年级数学学生提供教科书的治疗学校的成果推动的，其中两年的出勤率从 0.57 上升到 0.64。在这些学校中，初始技能水平使他们准备好使用六年级数学课本的学生在数学成绩方面取得了显着进步。我们发现几乎没有证据表明 PFP 提高了没有书本的学校的出勤率或成绩，尽管 PFP 对有书和没有书本的学校报告的教师努力有相同的影响。我们推测教师的努力和书籍是教育生产的补充，并记录了与这一假设一致的几个结果。