teach the low-performing students reading improves learning, while disseminating information to communities about rights and responsibilities regarding education and the state of learning in the village does not (although it does improve general awareness about education). In another promising example of local-level engagement, Bjorkman and Svensson (2009) show improvements in service utilization, quality of service delivery and health outcomes in Uganda, as a result of organized meetings with community members and health service providers about the level of services in the village, and provider responsibilities.

In the following section we discuss the motivation for the field experiment, and describe the interventions in detail. Section III outlines the sampling strategy, timing and what information was collected. We then present the approach used in the empirical analysis (section IV), followed by the results (section V). Section VI discusses results from a companion qualitative study conducted in a subset of the schools, and Section VII outlines what factors may have led to learning in the linkage and linkage+election interventions. We conclude in section VIII with a summary of findings.

# **II. Motivation, intervention design and implementation**

After achieving universal primary school enrollment in the 1980s (current gross enrollment is 110 percent), Indonesia began to shift attention to quality with reforms such as teacher training and upgrading, curricula revision, facility improvements, and later on school-based management (Kristiansen, Stein and Pratikno (2006)).<sup>5</sup> Despite these initiatives, Indonesia awaits marked progress in learning. In reading, it ranks 57<sup>th</sup> out of 65 countries that participated in the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) in 2009 (OECED (2009)); and in the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) 2007 (I.V.S. Mullis et al. (2008)), only half of Indonesia‟s students performed above the lowest international benchmark. Hanushek (2008) also finds that just nearly 30 percent of a cohort of grade nine Indonesian students had achieved full literacy. Data on service quality suggest substantial scope for improvements in efficiency. Teacher absenteeism is estimated at 15 percent (SMERU (2008)).

Against this backdrop of national efforts at promoting education quality, the Government of Indonesia in 2002 instituted a decree that gave school committees a greater role in advising and supporting school management, and encouraged greater engagement with community.<sup>6</sup> The decree stipulated that school committees would replace existing school-level committees known as BP3 ( _badan pembantu penyelenggaraan pendidikan_ ) in Indonesian. The primary function of the BP3 was to raise funds from parents and the community to support the school, yet the funds were largely handed over to principals. The school committee would go a few steps further, making recommendations on school expenditures, teacher

> 5 Enrollment figures calculated using SUSENAS 2009. Enrollments dipped below 100 percent during the 1997-98 crisis, but returned to pre-crisis levels in the 2000s. 6 Lampiran I Keputusan Menteri Pendidikan Nasional,Nomor 044/U/2002, Tanggal 2 April 2002 5