As originally conceived, the Jamaica Basic Education Project aimed to improve student performance in reading and mathematics in grades 1-3, strengthen accountability in the primary education system through use of measurement tools and establishment of standards, and build regional capacity for school management oversight. From early 2010 through spring of 2012, the project was implemented in 250 schools throughout all six Ministry of Education (MOE) regions. Among the schools originally targeted for project intervention were 54 schools in crime-prone communities, which received additional resources through the Caribbean Basin Security Initiative (CBSI), including books and computers. In contrast to previous USAID-funded projects since 1998, the current project did not have a direct presence in the schools themselves. Rather, a memorandum of understanding (MOU) between the project and the MOE, as well as terms of reference (TOR) between the project and the Jamaica Teaching Council (JTC), devolved much of the responsibility for teacher training to the JTC, and the responsibility for the monitoring of school-based project implementation to the MOE.

Underlying this model—and in line with the current USAID Forward objective of building the capacity of countries to lead their own development—was the logic that the MOE and its associated agencies would be in a position to assume progressively more responsibility for project implementation. In accordance with the project design, project staff collaborated with JTC to train a small group of trainers, made up of retired teachers and other educational specialists. These trainers then trained principals and “resource teachers” in workshops facilitated by regional education officers. Resource teachers then returned to their home schools and trained their colleagues (referred to in this evaluation as “non-resource teachers”), so that all the teachers in the 250 project schools could implement the project-promoted teaching techniques in their classrooms. This model of training, known as the “cascade model,” is intended to build the capacity of the education system at all levels, while also reaching a large number of teachers with a relatively small number of direct, project-run trainings.