Escalera

Our vision

In 2035, the school shortage is history. It’s over. Everyone has a school, and everyone who wants to, goes. Everyone. Those born into poverty now have choice. And they are choosing change. The world still has millions of problems, but billions of students are tackling them.

Our strategy

We think we can send a lot of kids to school on our own, but we know we could send even more by influencing public policy. To influence public policy, we think our best bet is to scale our solutions with Pay for Success, a model where policymakers pay for positive social outcomes that we provide. Our current programming includes targeted scholarships and critical information to those most in danger of leaving the school system forever. Alongside these efforts, Escalera builds schools and is exploring the role entrepreneurship can play in lifting children and young adults out of poverty.

Our philosophy

If it is not measured, it is not impact; and if it is not impact, it merits no investment. Independently-verifiable causal outcomes are our measure of success. Evaluation is difficult to do well; few do it, and even fewer do it well. We try to do it well. That’s why we randomize to measure impact. Randomized Control Trials provide us with a control group against which we can compare results. The control group allows us to determine whether we had an impact because we can exclude the effects of other things that are difficult to see, like a student’s innate talent or drive. All evaluation has flaws, and an RCT is no exception. However, an RCT, when done correctly, is less prone to error than most other methods.

www.escalera.org