Communities qualify for a PROHECO school if they meet the following criteria: (1) they are located in a rural area, (2) there are at least 25 pre-school and primary-school age children able to attend, (3) the nearest school is at least 3 km away, and (4) the village is located in an area that was affected by hurricane Mitch. Once communities are identified, a government employee visits them to inform them of the project and, if they agree to participate, helps them elect a school council. The government employee is also responsible for providing ongoing advice and capacity building on organizational matters and administrative and legal procedures. Training and support are crucial since communities are not familiar with carrying out the functions that the decentralization reform devolves to them.

# _Measuring Empowerment in PROHECO_

PROHECO’s impact evaluation seeks to measure empowerment in the context of two power relationships that are potentially affected by the education reform. These are power relations (1) among different community members, and (2) between the school council and education authorities, including school staff. Related hypotheses state that the project empowers different community members to participate in and have a voice in school council meetings, irrespective of their gender, socio-economic status, or ethnicity; and that the reform empowers school councils to have greater decision-making authority and autonomy in relation to education authorities and school staff.

Identifying these power relations and where they play out helped select the sub-domains and levels where empowerment is measured. It also helped determine the units and locus of data collection and analysis. The PROHECO evaluation addresses both the service delivery sub-domain (assessing whether the school council is able to carry out the devolved tasks) and the household and community sub-domains (assessing whether different household and community members are able to participate in the school council).

Similar to WDIP and RWSS, the PROHECO evaluation uses a mixed-methods approach, applying institutional and household surveys at the quantitative stage as well as key informant and community interviews during the qualitative stage. The evaluation uses both a treatment and a control group, allowing for a comparison between schools managed by the community school council and those which are part of the traditional state-run system.

In terms of school council empowerment, the evaluation assesses whether the council is able to carry out its devolved functions. Indicators of degrees of empowerment therefore correspond to a council’s capacity to build and maintain the school building, to buy school supplies, to oversee the budget, and to hire and fire teachers. Using the concepts of assets and opportunity structure, a series of factors that influence the council’s capacity to assume its new tasks were determined. Examples of assets that help councils carry out their newly assigned functions include the amount of relevant information and training the councils receive. The opportunity structure for school council empowerment can be divided into (1) formal rules, such as the decrees and regulations that specify the details of the decentralization reform, including the nature of the powers to be devolved to the 22