Friday, December 24, 2010

Department of Wow, or, Valuing a Great Teacher

A new NBER working paper from Eric Hanushek makes the following claim:
A teacher one standard deviation above the mean effectiveness annually generates marginal gains of over $400,000 in present value of student future earnings with a class size of 20 and proportionately higher with larger class sizes. Alternatively, replacing the bottom 5-8 percent of teachers with average teachers could move the U.S. near the top of international math and science rankings with a present value of $100 trillion.

I am using this post to save the link because I haven't yet read the paper. But if this is true, which I wouldn't find surprising, then... Wow.
HT: Greg Mankiw

Friday, December 17, 2010

Spousonomics

In the trendy fashion of applying economic logic to new fields, Spousonomics is applying economic reasoning to marriage, for better or worse.

I particularly enjoyed this interview with Economist and Game Theorist Jeff Ely of Northwestern University.

Does being an economist make you better or worse at resolving conflict with your wife?

As an economist and game theorist I have a unique understanding of the secrets of conflict resolution. And my marriage will be peaceful and harmonious once my wife accepts that.


...admittedly not terrifically funny , but I figure it was time I blogged about something.

Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Teaching Philosophy

I've sat down and written it on more than one occasion. Though I'm certain it is naive and misguided, here is what I have (and how I feel about education). Yeah, it's long. Sorry.

I'm terrified of feedback, but that seems to be all the more reason to put this up on the internet.

I do not subscribe to the idea that students are blank slates. They come to the classroom as a collection of experiences, shaped by their own families, their peers, their environments, previous teachers, and a whole collection of factors too numerous for me to count. Many students have influences I cannot name or begin to understand. Ultimately, great teachers and poor teachers are small subset of the influences on a student. A great teacher can unlock potential within a student, often by showing them how to succeed. However, without the support of other teachers, peers, community, or family, it is nearly impossible for a teacher to succeed in bringing out the most outstanding aspects of any individual student.

Successful teaching most often is a function of repetition. I looked to athletics first, and realized that most athletes learn how to perform in their sport (throw and catch a football, hit a baseball, etc.) simply by practicing over and over again. Even professionals must practice regularly to maintain excellence. Next, I looked to music. Musicians play their instruments every day, and even professionals spend time rehearsing before they perform. Finally, I looked back to basic subjects: reading, writing, and mathematics. In my experience, I have been most successful learning each of these when I am engaging myself on a daily basis. I struggle in math, even today, when I take multiple days and do not solve any problems. I cannot read or write as quickly when I go a week without doing so. Repetition is the key to become a master of a subject, task, or craft.

The biggest obstacle to utilizing repetition is student engagement. After all, it can get boring to perform the same tasks over and over again. The best way to avoid making repetition boring is to frame the repeated task in a different way. Begin each class by doing a quick warm-up exercise. Have a contest for students to see who can do the most simple problems in a period of time. Divide students into groups and get them to solve complex problems. Provide different instructions for each task, so that it is framed differently. This will help combat student boredom while still engaging them in repeating a task until they are proficient.

Finally, when it comes to teaching, it is important to understand the power of persuasion. Too often, leaders resort to using authority to convince persons to perform a certain task. This is a mistake, because authority can be bested by a higher authority. Persuasion, however, is much more difficult to overcome when used properly. If students can be persuaded to do something, then they will be doing so willingly. This will yield greater student interest, on net, than simply requirement by force.

Overall, the most successful teachers are those who can engage their students in doing a task they might otherwise find lowly or of mean reward. The power of repetition in the classroom at all levels should never be forgotten. However, teaching only with repetition will not provide the students with the intellectual stimulation they need to remain interested in learning new material on a regular basis. Framing tasks in such a way that students participate of their own accord simultaneously maximizes student interest and learning.

Monday, December 13, 2010

School Deregulation

At National Affairs, Frederick Hess has an extended piece onhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif school choice. One of his main points is that the rhetoric of "school choice" developed in a funny way (according to him, because the urban African-American leaders calling for better options in schooling had the most politically palatable rhetoric). I wonder if the fate of the school choice movement would be at all different if it were instead called school deregulation.

Lots of gems at the article, I won't quote many here because I encourage you to take some time and read it. My favorite quote:

Markets are a product of laws, norms, talent, information, and capital, and the absence of these can readily yield market failures — not because markets do not work, but because markets are not a magical salve.

I am totally fascinated by education policy right now. Is this because it's a compelling topic or because I should be studying for finals? Guess I will know next week.

(H/T Tyler Cowen)

Friday, December 10, 2010

Very Good Sentences

If we are looking to remedy the harmful kinds of inequality, we should focus on good educational reform, the benefits of which start accruing to a person quite early in life but also last through the entire life.


That's from Tyler Cowen (who else?) in a recent symposium at the New York Times, available here.

One of many reasons I am looking closely not only at Teach for America, but at teaching as a vocation for the rest of my life.

Compared with the totality of knowledge which is continually utilized in the evolution of a dynamic civilization, the difference between the knowledge that the wisest and that which the most ignorant individual can deliberately employ is comparatively insignificant. ~Fredrich Hayek in The Constitution of Liberty