A society with and without schooling
Tyler Cowen’s discussion of higher education value is one plausible way to answer the question, What is the benefit of higher education? It’s now common that a fire chief has to have a master’s degree. That may sound silly and it would be easy to think that a master’s degree has not very much to do […]
K12: not necessarily a great investment
Apparently my idea for a distance education short-selling investment club is close to a reasonable deal. What I wrote: The major risk for a large business (such as Pearson) entering and maintaining a unit devoted to distance learning is not captured by the fact that distance education has a poor track record of effectiveness (so do […]
How I will judge reporting of the value-added scores in NYC
I am firmly of the belief that you lay out grading expectations for students with as much notice as possible, and so here is my grading scale for reporters and newspapers in handling the value-added scores that the city Department of Education is releasing today, after courts have mandated their release: A: Newspaper reporting on […]
Quasicohort and period measures are weak proxies for the new federal graduation rate
If you were wondering where I was going last week with the release of Florida graduation rates using the new federal definition, it’s this: an analysis of proxy high school graduation measures. It’s short, but I wanted to make it available quickly both here and on the Social Science Research Network because the point is sobering: all […]
Belated thoughts on New York’s teacher evaluation agreements
Loads of writing has passed since last week’s agreement in New York on teacher evaluations. See the following for a very brief sample: The extent to which local bargaining would still determine evaluation specifics. Andrew Cuomo’s defense of 40% from test scores in comparison with other states. Carol Corbett Burris’s argument for why the formula […]