Enhancing Human Capital in Children: A Case Study on Scaling

This paper provides novel insights into the science of scaling by examining an educational mentoring program in Mexico. The empirical analysis encompasses two independent field experiments and seizes a unique opportunity to learn from the government’s implementation of the same intervention. While the program originally implemented at scale demonstrates limited effectiveness, the introduction of a new modality with enhanced mentor training significantly improves children’s outcomes. Mentor-parent interactions are found to stimulate parental engagement at the community-school level. Our findings support the hypothesis that parents can play an important role in facilitating the scalability of educational programs.