Category: Education

Katrina’s Silver Lining

by  Alex Tabarrok in

Here is Amy Waldman writing in The Atlantic in 2007:

The storm ravaged the city’s architecture and infrastructure, took hundreds of lives, exiled hundreds of thousands of residents. But it also destroyed, or enabled the destruction of, the city’s public-school system—an outcome many New Orleanians saw as deliverance. That system had begun with great promise, in 1841, as one of the first in the Deep South. It had effectively ended, in 2005, in disaster—and not just the natural kind. Its defining characteristics were financial high jinks and low academic performance. On the last state achievement test before Katrina hit, 74 percent of eighth-graders had failed to demonstrate “basic” skills in English/Language Arts, and 70 percent scored below “basic” in math. The Orleans Parish School Board, which ran the city’s schools, was $450 million in debt. Yet these numbers did not begin to capture the day-to-day texture of the schools: when students held a press conference to express their post-Katrina wishes, they asked for textbooks, toilet paper, and teachers who liked them.

…New Orleans, barely a presence in the charter-school movement before the storm, now had a higher proportion of charter schools than any other American city—and unlike most of the country’s 4,000 such schools, these had the backing of the establishment. Most radical of all, the neighborhood school had been banished—parents would have total freedom to choose which school their children would attend, no matter where they lived. Introducing school choice and weakening teachers’ unions had both long been goals of many educational reformers. Circumstance had made New Orleans the laboratory for these ideas. Ben Kleban, a charter-school proponent drawn to New Orleans by this flourishing, called it “the biggest experiment in a system of schools of choice we’ve ever seen.” Leslie Jacobs, a member of the state school board, called it “the most market-driven system in the United States.”

So what are the results? Here is an article from Tuesday’s Times-Picayune:

Standardized test scores improved for the fourth year in a row for students in the state’s Recovery School District, providing more evidence that the radical reforms undertaken after Hurricane Katrina are producing results.

New state data show results in the RSD, a state body that took over most city schools after the 2005 storm, progressed somewhat unevenly, but once again outpaced the rest of Louisiana.

Since 2007, the proportion of students in the district scoring “basic” — essentially at grade level — or better has now more than doubled from 23 percent to 48 percent, rising faster than any other district in the state.

Many problems remain, of course, and educational reform has a way of nearly always disappointing.  I have not crunched the numbers or looked at controls but the gain is impressive and the growth in scores is higher in the RSD region compared to other Louisiana regions.

It’s amazing that getting rid of “neighborhood schools”, i.e. neighborhood monopolies, should be considered a radical reform but it is and I am pleased that the signs are positive.

Bonus Discovery: Treme explained, a guide to the series.

Open entry schools, the university as forum

by  Tyler Cowen in

I’ve been reading the fascinating A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction by Christopher Alexander et.al., a book which I recommend to all urbanists, all architecture fans, Jane Jacobs fans, and Hayekians.  In passing, the authors toss out a proposal for reorganizing modern universities.  It has two simple principles:

1. Anyone can take a course…

2. Anyone can give a course…

Maybe that would make Peter Thiel happy.  The authors also believe that a university should consist of a series of relatively low buildings, with a lot of pedestrian pathways, with the buildings at fifty foot intervals.  (The book is in large part about how the organization of space and construction shapes spontaneous orders.)

It sounds a bit outrageous to turn Harvard into Hyde Park Speaker’s Corner, but Harvard admin. could publish a list of approved courses, all other courses you take your chances.  There still could be a “Harvard admin.-approved degree,” based on those courses, even if not everyone goes that route.  (How many current Harvard classes could keep reasonably high enrollments in the face of such competition?)  If you still find this proposal either unpalatable or commercially unpersuasive, are you prepared to admit how much the current university model is based on the idea of exclusion?  And how would you square that emphasis with university ideals more generally?

The Spencer Scholarship plan

by  Tyler Cowen in

For months, Fitzsimmons gave each of the women $200 weekly, promised to pay for their college tuition, treated them to lavish nights on the town and even bought one a car as part of his so-called Spencer Scholarship Plan. They were spanked if they violated rules, such as failing to call Fitzsimmons or drinking too much alcohol…

The Spencer Plan started in the 1930s as a form of “carefully regulated corporal punishment” between husband and wife. Couples agreed to a list of things the wife needed to change, such as not spending money frivolously. If the rules were broken, the husband punished her by spanking and it was put behind them. It has expanded through the years.

One 21-year-old woman testified Thursday that the day she joined the program in November, Fitzsimmons spanked her and gave her $300. He paid for her to live in an oceanfront suite and gave her a $200 weekly allowance. In return, she was required to walk 20 blocks each day, keep a log of her meals and spending and refrain from drugs. When she didn’t, she was spanked.

Fitzsimmons took it further, she said, when on three occasions he sexually assaulted her with a curtain rod, a hairbrush and a horse riding crop. When asked by attorneys why she allowed it to happen, she replied: “I’m not allowed to tell him no.”

I can’t bring myself to file this one under “Markets in Everything,” though read the last line of the piece.  For the pointer I thank DL.

SWORD for Peer Grading

by  Alex Tabarrok in

Jennifer Imazeki who blogs at Economics for Teachers has an interesting post about SWORD, a peer review system for grading writing. Basically students write an assignment and submit it to SWORD which randomly assigns 5 other students to grade the assignment and offer helpful comments; the gradees, in turn, grade the quality of the comments.  Here’s Imazeki on some neat aspects of the system:

One of the coolest things about the SWoRD system is how it calculates grades. Students receive a grade both for reviewing and for writing. The reviewing grades are based half on ‘consistency’, which takes into account things like if a student just gives all high scores or all low scores, or scores that are really different from the other reviewers of the same papers, and half on the back evaluation ‘helpfulness’ scores. The writing grades are based on the numeric rubric scores from the reviewers but adjusted for the consistency of the reviewers so, for example, if a paper has four reviewers who give high scores and one reviewer who gives low scores, the low scores from that one reviewer will be given less weight. The instructor can also adjust how much weight is given to the reviewing and the writing scores for each assignment.

The big virtue of SWORD is that it makes written assignments feasible even in a large class.  I will be interested to read how Imazeki’s pilot experiment works out.

Opportunity cost

by  Tyler Cowen in

I then wrote to a number of well-known philosophers, asking each of them if they would supervise a course-by-mail, consisting of my writing letters to them about their work, getting responses from them, and ultimately providing comments on a paper I wrote. Nancy Cartwright, Lynne Rudder Baker and Nathan Oaklander agreed to do this for me. They were all extremely generous with their time, and I owe all three of them, along with Quentin, an enormous debt.

That is from LA Paul, who has since become a very accomplished philosopher.  How many economists would help out in the same way?  Hat tip goes to Kieran Healy.

Further evidence that it’s not just about wage stickiness

by  Tyler Cowen in

Employment rates for new college graduates have fallen sharply in the last two years, as have starting salaries for those who can find work. What’s more, only half of the jobs landed by these new graduates even require a college degree, reviving debates about whether higher education is “worth it” after all.

That is from Catherine Rampell.  As I like to say, wage stickiness is for the workers you’ve already hired, not for the new ones.  And yet employment for the new workers is not running smoothly, so how can it all be about wage stickiness?  That said, this is also circumstantial evidence that low employment rates are in part about wage stickiness.  If wages are falling for new hires, it is probably the case that for many currently employed workers real wages need to fall as well, and that often happens only with some resistance.

What else is driving lower employment for recent college graduates?  Some of them are quite willing to simply not work for a while.  Others fear that low-track jobs will hurt their future careers and so they wait rather than starting as a garbageman.  What else?

Scenes from the Class Struggle

by  Alex Tabarrok in

Two quotes:

When schoolchildren start paying union dues, that’s when I’ll start representing the interests of schoolchildren.

and

The key is that unless there is accountability, we will never get the right system. As long as there are no consequences if kids or adults don’t perform, as long as the discussion is not about education and student outcomes, then we’re playing a game as to who has the power.

….I think we will get—and deserve—the end of public education through some sort of privatization scheme if we don’t behave differently.

Surprisingly, both quotes are from Albert Shanker, President of the American Teacher’s Federation from 1974 to 1997. Shanker is quoted in an excellent piece in the Atlantic by Joel Klein, former chancellor of New York City’s school system, who argues that his eight years of attempted reforms in New York were undermined by teacher’s unions who continue to operate according to the former rather than the latter philosophy.

Sentences to ponder

by  Tyler Cowen in

When it comes to grading, Republican and Democratic professors at one unnamed elite university put their ideologies into practice, a new study finds: Republicans welcomed inequality, handing out more very high and very low grades, and Democrats’ grades grouped more tightly around the average.

Republicans also gave black students lower grades than their colleagues. In both cases, the researchers stressed, there was no way to know which approach better reflected students’ performance.

From Christopher Shea, here is more, including a link to the paper.

Vance isn’t sure if this article is a parody or not

by  Tyler Cowen in

Emotions are running high in the Northbrae area of Berkeley, and the friendly spirit of the neighborhood is at stake, according to a number of small merchants who are afraid they will not survive in the wake of what is being perceived as aggressive marketing strategies at Monterey Market.

Several small businesses say the owners of Monterey Market have begun to deliberately stock items that they specialize in — including certain cheeses, wine and flowers — and they are selling them at predatory prices, which threatens the local merchants’ livelihoods.

A group of Northbrae neighbors has distributed a hand-out in support of the small local merchants in which it criticizes Monterey’s approach. ”We are making a moral and ethical appeal,” said Tom Meyer, speaking for the group. Signatories on the hand-out include Monterey Fish, Gioa Pizzeria, Hopkins Launderette, and Storey Framing. (See the hand-out here.)

…Meyer said that recently the group had been approached by a representative of Monterey Market to set up a meeting. “That discussion will determine where we go from here,” he said.

Asked what he expected from the Market, Meyer said: “They should talk to their fellow merchants about how they could all flourish.”

The story — if that’s what it is and I believe it is — is here.  The caption on the photo reads: “Shirley Ng, owner of Country Cheese Coffee Market, says Monterey Market is under-cutting her prices.”

Loser men

by  Tyler Cowen in

David Brooks (don’t forget his new book) writes:

…in 1954, about 96 percent of American men between the ages of 25 and 54 worked. Today that number is around 80 percent. One-fifth of all men in their prime working ages are not getting up and going to work. According to figures from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the United States has a smaller share of prime age men in the work force than any other G-7 nation. The number of Americans on the permanent disability rolls, meanwhile, has steadily increased. Ten years ago, 5 million Americans collected a federal disability benefit. Now 8.2 million do. That costs taxpayers $115 billion a year, or about $1,500 per household.

…There are probably more idle men now than at any time since the Great Depression, and this time the problem is mostly structural, not cyclical. These men will find it hard to attract spouses. Many will pick up habits that have a corrosive cultural influence on those around them.

The rise in disability comes across a time horizon when jobs are becoming much safer and health care is improving.

I am struck by the difference between how some economists talk about “the job market,” and how they talk about the job market in academia, which of course is the job market they know the most about.

When it comes to the job market in academia, most economists have few hesitations about blaming many of the jobless for their fate and applying extreme meritocratic views.  “He spent seven years finishing.”  “Her specification was not robust.”  “He self-destructed in the interview.”  Or, believe it or not, “We don’t even look at people from that school.”

(And as Robin Hanson noted, there is little talk of redistributing grades, Ph.d.s, enforcing mandatory co-authorship for job market papers, or redistributing other measures of academic accomplishment.)

Nonetheless there is clearly a significant cyclical component to academic unemployment, based largely on state government budgets for higher education; as of a few years ago, seventy-eight percent of students were in the state sector.  If your department doesn’t have a slot, you probably can’t hire anybody, although a willingness to work for (much) less can lead to an adjunct job, even if many people won’t take one.

That cyclical component accounts for a lot of the short-run variation in hiring, but if you’re estimating the response to a demand shock, longer-term supply trends matter too and often they matter a great deal.  If Ph.d. programs were stricter about enforcing standards of quality and relevance, rather than stringing along students to maintain the flow of revenue to the graduate program, the short run negative demand shocks would lead to a much less severe queuing problem.  That’s simple microeconomics, and it should be macroeconomics too.

Furthermore short run negative demand shocks can reveal an unsustainable long-run trend in a new and sudden way, just as they do in financial crises.

When it comes to the jobless it is incorrect — and often hypocritical — to dismiss the common sense talk of traditional meritocratic factors, including structural problems on the supply side.

Addendum: Matt responds to Brooks, but his numbers don’t support his case.  As I’ve argued before, it’s a lot “harder” to get a shift from ten to twenty percent unemployment than it is to get a shift from one to two percent.  The cross-sectional distribution in unemployment, and its recent changes, are fully consistent with and indeed support the notion of major structural problems in the most vulnerable sectors, threshold-triggered by negative demand shocks.  Again, it’s two blades of the scissors, not one.

How to bribe your kids?

by  Tyler Cowen in

From Gareth Cook, here are some tips for how to make the bribes work and avoid the undermining of intrinsic motivation:

Based on what is now known, Pierce and others suggest a set of guiding principles.

Choose a specific, positive behavior. “Have at least three bites of a vegetable every dinner for a week.’’ (Good.) “Don’t annoy me.’’ (Not good.)

Choose smart rewards. Work with your kid to choose the prize, investing them and ensuring it’s one they truly desire. A few selections from the LEGO catalogue were all it took me to solve an Olympian parenting problem: thumb sucking. But a reward need not be large.

Stay positive. In our house, we call them “challenges.’’ It is not about “fixing’’ a negative. Don’t nag. Let it be their choice. Pile on the praise.

Small steps first. Faced with an overwhelming task, start with easy goals, and small rewards, and slowly build. So, you might start with “avoid thumb one day between breakfast and nap.’’ Consider a detailed progress chart.

Those are largely good ideas, whether or not you are bribing your kids.