Archive for the ‘Education’ Category

schooling is not learning

Tuesday, April 2nd, 2019

Many years ago I came across a book reporting an evaluation of children who completed primary school (grade five) in Pakistan (or perhaps it was Bangladesh) compared to classmates who had dropped out of school in their first or second year. The results were very clear: there was no difference between the two groups. Many students were warming seats in the classroom, but were not learning anything. Actually, the dropouts managed to out-perform graduates in mathematics. Apparently it is important for street kids to learn math, so that they can make change when selling products. I don’t recall the name or author of the book, or even what country I was in. I only remember that I read it in a library, and was unable to borrow or copy it. Sadly, I did not take notes because I was not working in the field of education at the time. Some day, I hope to find the book to refresh my memory of it.

This introduction is to explain why I was excited to discover a World Bank working paper that examines schooling in terms of what is learned (examination scores) rather than years spent warming a classroom seat. The researchers assess the effect of spending on access to schooling and learning outcomes, using the World Bank’s new measure of outcomes, known as Learning-Adjusted Years of Schooling (LAYS). Previously, it was common to rely on years of schooling, with no attempt to measure what, if anything, might have been learned. (more…)

‘publish or perish’ in universities

Monday, April 23rd, 2018

It is well-known that university professors must publish in peer-reviewed journals in order to obtain tenure and retain their jobs. At the same time, good researchers are rarely the best teachers. Steve Payson, a certified economist who has an MSc from the London School of Economics and a PhD from Columbia University, has written a very personal and very strong critique of this system. (more…)

thinking like an economist

Sunday, July 16th, 2017

From University of California-Berkeley economist Brad DeLong:

Economics might have developed as a descriptive science, like sociology or political science. If so, courses in economics would concentrate on economic institutions and practices and the institutional structure of the economy as a whole. But it has not; it has instead become a more abstract science that emphasizes general principles applicable to a variety of situations. Thus a large part of economics involves a particular set of tools: a unique way of thinking about the world that is closely linked with the analytical tools economists use and that is couched in a particular technical language and a particular set of data. While one can get a lot out of sociology and political science courses without learning to think like a sociologist or a political scientist (because of their focus on institutional description), it is not possible to get much out of an economics course without learning to think like an economist.

Brad DeLong, “How to Think Like an Economist (If, That Is, You Wish to…)”, Grasping Reality with All Tentacles, 15 July 2017.

This is a long, useful blog for those who would like to understand why, and how, economists reach conclusions that may seem odd to others. We are a weird tribe of nerds!

HT Mark Thoma

 

who are the best teachers?

Sunday, July 16th, 2017

Most certainly, not geniuses in their field. Harvard economist Larry Summers, for example, tells this story about his Nobel laureate uncle, Kenneth Arrow (1921-2017).

Kenneth had a real problem as a teacher, which is that he didn

private schools in China

Friday, May 19th, 2017

Demand for private schooling is increasing in China, but supply is stagnant. Selection is tighter and the number of disappointed parents and grandparents is increasing. (more…)

for-profit schools in Africa

Saturday, April 29th, 2017

Further to last week’s post on Liberia’s for-profit schools, today’s Financial Times contains a letter to the editor from a British educator working in Uganda. The writer of the letter, Adam Nichols, is a strong proponent of private schooling in Africa. (more…)

schooling in Myanmar (Burma)

Friday, April 28th, 2017

The World Bank gives low marks to schooling in Myanmar, a Southeast Asian country known also as Burma.

Myanmar has suffered from low school enrolment and completion rates (one third of 1.2 million students enrolled in grade 1 made it to grade 11, and only one third of those passed the school leaving exam); poor learning outcomes (9 percent of a third grade class in Yangon [the country’s largest city and former capital city] cannot read a single word); and inequalities in access and quality (net primary enrolment as low as 69 percent in poorer areas compared to 85 percent average nationally). [Emphasis added.]

World Bank, Myanmar: Public Expenditure Review, September 2015, p. 39.

The government of Myanmar provides a different, positive spin on schooling in the country.

Myanmar

Liberia’s for-profit public schools

Saturday, April 22nd, 2017

Liberia’s primary and secondary schools are dismal, even by the standards of sub-Saharan Africa. A new education minister in 2015 decided to address the problem by outsourcing education to private, for-profit companies.

FT Africa editor David Pilling visited Liberia, to see how the experiment is progressing, and filed a long report. He found that the results are not very impressive. But perhaps it is too early to judge such revolutionary changes in provision of free, public schooling. (more…)

the Swedish model of school choice

Sunday, January 1st, 2017

Here is the promised TdJ, extracted from my July 2008 essay “Basic education as a human right redux”. (more…)

in defence of school choice

Sunday, January 1st, 2017

University of Michigan economist Susan Dynarski has written an op-ed for the New York Times that questions the value of markets in education, apparently because parents are unable to judge the quality of schooling options offered to their children. I disagree, but stress conditions ignored by Ms Dynarski, but essential to guarantee all participants in the market equal access to public and private schools. (more…)