Why do so many educational reforms fail to produce the outcomes they promise? What can rigorous field research teach us about the realities of schools, teachers, and families? And how can policymakers design interventions that respond to evidence rather than assumptions?

Jishnu Das is a Distinguished Professor at the McCourt School of Public Policy and the Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. His research focuses on education, health, and development economics, with a particular emphasis on how public services function in low- and middle-income countries. Through extensive fieldwork across South Asia, Africa, and beyond, he has examined the gap between policy intentions and real-world implementation.

His work combines economic analysis with on-the-ground observation, offering valuable insights into how institutions succeed, fail, and evolve.

In this episode, we explore why improving educational outcomes requires more than good intentions. Jishnu explains how many reforms are designed around assumptions about how schools operate rather than evidence about what actually happens inside classrooms. We discuss teacher quality, accountability, learning outcomes, and the challenges of measuring educational success across diverse contexts.

Our conversation also examines the importance of field research in understanding complex systems. Jishnu argues that meaningful improvement depends on carefully observing how policies interact with local realities, institutional incentives, and human behavior. Rather than searching for universal solutions, he emphasizes the need for humility, experimentation, and evidence-driven decision making.

This episode invites listeners to think more critically about educational reform and public policy. It highlights the value of rigorous research, challenges simplistic narratives about improvement, and asks what it would mean to build systems that learn from evidence rather than ideology.