Contents -- Foreword -- Acknowledgments -- Acronyms and Abbreviations -- Executive Summary -- 1. Overview of Current Indicators -- Coverage -- Learning and Quality -- 2. Educational Diagnostics and Recommendations -- Stock of Peruvian Research on "What Works" in Schooling -- Existing Stock of Policy Suggestions -- Remaining Impediments -- 3. The Accountability-Triangle Approach -- 4. Education Finance -- Patterns of Educational Expenditure -- Education System Efficiency -- Spending Incidence and Equity -- Distribution of Results -- Summary of Inequality of Benefits -- Special Focus on Teacher Costs -- Other Input Supplies -- 5. Why Don't Some Peruvian Children Finish High School? -- The Quantitative Evidence -- Returns to Education -- Qualitative Analysis of Dropout Motivations -- Policy Implications -- 6. Reading in the Early Grades: A Case Study in the Use of Standards -- Simple Reading Benchmarks -- Aims, Method, and Sample -- Basic Results -- Some Causal Analysis Related to Standards and Support -- 7. School Management Issues -- Behavior and Choice in Peru's Public Schools -- Direct Relationship Between Schools and Community: Fe y Alegría and the "Directed Autonomy"Model -- 8. Progress and Paralysis on Intercultural and Bilingual Education: A Special Problem with Standards -- The Issue -- What Does it Take, and Is Peru Doing What it Takes? -- A Special Issue Related to "Compact" and Accountability: Standards and Standardization in EIB -- 9. Participation and Decentralization: Little Effect, Some Potential -- School Level -- Levels Above the School -- A Way Forward on Voice and Participation? Opportunities and Dangers in Decentralization -- 10. Policy Recommendations -- Standards -- Accountability -- Support -- Appendixes A. Dogo -- Appendixes B. Classification and Frequency of Classroom Activities -- Bibliography -- List of Tables.

1.1. Education System Coverage Data for Peru and Latin America as a Whole -- 2.1. Factors Associated with Improved Learning Results in Peru -- 2.2. Results on Determinants of Learning Based on 2001 National Evaluation -- 2.3. Results on Determinants of Learning Based on 2001 National Evaluation -- 2.4. Summary of Policy Recommendations in Some Key Peruvian Literature and Literature on Peru -- 4.1. Calculation of Expenditure Benchmarks Suitable for Peru -- 4.2. Key Expenditure Patterns in Peru -- 4.3. Beneficiary Incidence by Quintile, 2003 (assuming equal spending per beneficiary) -- 4.4. Benefit Incidence by Quintile, 2003 (assuming unequal spending per beneficiary) -- 4.5. Benefit or Beneficiary Incidence-International Medians in Various Years -- 4.6. Demographic and Public Private Choice of Families, by Income Quintile, as Determinants of Pro-poor Spending, 2003 -- 4.7. Proportion of Youths Enrolled in School 2003 -- 4.8. Benefits Represented by Public School Subsidy as a Proportion of Total Household Expenditure Across All Households ("Relative Incidence"), 2003 -- 4.9. Per Student Spending and Poverty Levels by Region, 2003 -- 4.10. Summary on Inequality of Various Educational Benefits -- 4.11. Pupil-Teacher Ratios in Peru and Average for Latin America -- 4.12. Teacher Salaries in Peru, 1999-2004 -- 4.13. Textbook Provision in Peru: Selected Data -- 5.1. Quantitative Evidence on Dropping Out of School -- 5.2. Public and Private Returns to Education -- 6.1. Basic Sample Characteristics for School Reading Standards Survey -- 6.2. Basic Results -- 6.3. School-level Reading Factor Correlations -- 6.4. Relationship Between Reading and Comprehension -- 6.5. School-by-School and Type-by-Type Variation in Reading Ability -- 6.6. Reported Week of Textbook Arrival in the Classroom -- 6.7. Teacher Use of Classroom Time.

7.1. Schools Chosen for Assessing School Effectiveness Factors -- 7.2. Tallies of Effectiveness Factors -- 7.3. Official and Fe y Alegría Curricular Statements Compared -- 8.1. Tasks or Requirements Needed to Successfully Implement EIB and Degree of Presence in Peru -- 8.2. Projects in Educación Intercultural Bilingüe in Peru -- List of Figures -- 1.1. Real and Predicted PISA Scores -- 1.2. Relationship Between Access and Learning Scores -- 1.3. Frequency Distribution PISA 2000 Reading Performance -- 1.4. Cumulative Frequency PISA 2000 Reading Performance -- 1.5. Economic versus Educational Inequality -- 3.1. Accountability Triangle -- 4.1. Impact of Spending on Enrollment -- 4.2. Learning Efficiency of Peru's Education Expenditure -- 4.3. Efficiency Frontier for Primary Education -- 4.4. Efficiency Frontier for Secondary Education -- 4.5. Correlation Between Poverty and Spending Across Regions -- 4.6. Socioeconomic Index and Spanish Performance Across Schools -- 4.7. Socioeconomic Index and Mother Tongue Across Schools -- 4.8. Variation of Results Among the Poor versus the Less Poor, Controlling for Language -- 4.9. Nutritional Variability Among the Poor and Non-poor -- 4.10. Infrastructure, Supplies, and Learning Results -- 4.11. Socioeconomic Index and Quality of Input Supply -- 4.12. Socioeconomic Index and Infrastructure Supply -- 4.13. Learning Results and Pupil-Teacher Ratio -- 4.14. Learning Results Residuals and Pupil-Teacher Ratio -- 4.15. Socioeconomic Index and School Supplies -- 4.16. School Supplies and Learning -- 5.1. Age and School Enrollment by Income Group -- 5.2. Age and School Enrollment by Place of Residence -- 5.3. Age and School Enrollment by Gender -- 5.4. Grade-specific Enrollment Ratios by Place of Residence -- 5.5. Grade-specific Enrollment Ratios: Impact of Repetition -- 5.6. Grade-specific Enrollment Ratios by Gender.

5.7. Returns to Education in Peru -- 5.8. Returns to Education Around the World.