1,721,339 research outputs found
The toughest battleground: schools
Full text linkOver four decades ago, Milton Friedman published Capitalism and Freedom (Friedman 1962). This insightful little book traveled across a broad range of important topics collected around the theme of how government can best operate within a free society. The message was expanded two decades later in Free to Choose (Friedman and Friedman 1980). At the time, the battle of the ideas introduced by these books was being waged by nations, nations that were willing to contemplate war over how societies should be organized. As we look back on how the world has changed since then, I wonder if anybody guessed that changing the schools would be the most difficult subject taken on. It is useful to look at what progress has been made, what evidence exists on the topic, and what the future might hold in the area of education. The simple question is: Why are the schools tougher to crack than the walls of the Communist bloc?Education ; School choice
The Long Run Importance of School Quality
Full text linkThe role of schooling and school quality in the economy has become very confused, in part because of attempts to argue different positions on educational policy. Research demonstrates that school quality has a strong impact on individual earnings, on the distribution of income, and on overall economic growth. In contrast to these long run factors, today's school quality has little to do with current business cycles or unemployment rates. This paper emphasizes the importance of school quality -- measured by math and science test scores -- on economic growth. While U.S. growth has been strong over the 20th century, it has not been the result of high quality schooling relative to that in other countries. Instead other factors such as open labor markets and high quality colleges and universities appear to have masked the mediocre performance by U.S. students.
Das Pro und Contra der dualen Berufsausbildung über den Erwerbslebenszyklus in einer sich wandelnden Welt
Full text linkSowohl in der Politik als auch in der bisherigen Forschung wird betont, dass berufsspezifische Ausbildungen einen Vorteil gegenüber allgemeinen Bildungsgängen haben, indem sie jungen Leuten den Übergang vom Bildungs- ins Berufssystem erleichtern. Eric A. Hanushek, Stanford University, Ludger Wößmann, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München und ifo Institut, und Lei Zhang, National Institute for Fiscal Studies der Tsinghua Universität, zeigen aber, dass dieser Vorteil dem Nachteil geringerer Beschäftigungschancen im höheren Alter gegenübersteht, wenn man den vollen Erwerbslebenszyklus berücksichtigt und die Wirtschaft schnellem technologischem und strukturellem Wandel unterliegt.Berufsbildung, Beruf, Lebensverlauf, Bildungsverhalten, Einkommen
The Failure of Input-based Schooling Policies
Full text linkIn an effort to improve the quality of schools, governments around the world have dramatically increased the resources devoted to them. By concentrating on inputs and ignoring the incentives within schools, the resources have yielded little in the way of general improvement in student achievement. This paper provides a review of the United States and international evidence on the effectiveness of such input policies. It then contrasts the impact of resources with that of variations in teacher quality that are not systematically related to school resources. Finally, alternative performance incentive policies are described.
Conclusions and controversies about the effectiveness of school resources
Full text linkAlthough a majority of parents, educators, and policymakers report that their own schools are doing well, many believe that the U.S. education system as a whole is in trouble. The author points out that in the past decade an increasing amount of resources have been devoted to education, but U.S. students have continued to underperform students in other countries. To improve the effectiveness of spending, the author advocates radically different incentives for students and school personnel and better measures of student performance.Education
El paradigma económico de la educación desde la teoría de Eric A. Hanushek
Full text linkThis essay analyzes the paradigms of Eric A. Hanushek on the economics of education. Initially, it addresses the relationship between human capital and sustained economic growth in countries, that is, how the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is strongly related to the improvements in the cognitive abilities of its population, as well as the economic benefits Potential that should motivate governments to improve the quality of educational institutions and thus foster major reforms. In addition, it states that an effective strategy for the development of countries should not only focus on statistics on children entering schools or the number of children who acquire the next higher grade, but also on improving the cognitive skills measured through Of international math and science tests. Based on evidence, Hanushek argues that the quality of education measured by students’ cognitive abilities in international tests is substantially more important than the mere amount of education, therefore it is argued that investing large amounts of GDP in education does not Ensures economic growth; To achieve this, we must focus on the factors that are determinant for the achievement of the quality of education.Este ensayo analiza los paradigmas de Eric A. Hanushek sobre la economía de la educación. Inicialmente, aborda la relación del capital humano con el crecimiento económico sostenido de los países, es decir, cómo el Producto Interno Bruto (PIB) se encuentra fuertemente relacionado con las mejoras de las habilidades cognitivas que posee su población, asimismo, plantea los beneficios económicos potenciales que deberían motivar a los gobiernos a mejorar la calidad de las instituciones educativas y por tanto propiciar las grandes reformas. Además, establece que una estrategia eficaz para el desarrollo de los países no solo debería centrarse en las estadísticas sobre los niños que ingresan a las escuelas o la cantidad de niños que adquieren el grado inmediato superior, sino también en mejorar las habilidades cognitivas medidas a través de las pruebas internacionales de matemáticas y ciencias. Basado en evidencia, Hanushek sostiene que la calidad de la educación medida por las habilidades cognitivas que los estudiantes obtienen en las pruebas internacionales, es sustancialmente más importante que la mera cantidad de educación, por lo tanto, plantea que invertir grandes cantidades del PIB en educación no asegura el crecimiento económico; para lograrlo, se debe incidir en los factores que son determinantes para el logro de la calidad de la educación
Schooling, Inequality, and the Impact of Government
Full text linkAnalyses of income inequality have identified the importance of increased demand for worker skills, but characterizations of worker skills by the amount of schooling attained do not capture important aspects of the widening income distribution and of the stagnating relative wages of black workers. This paper is motivated by the possibility that schooling quality is an important component of the changing income distribution. The central analysis focuses on how governmental schooling policies particularly those related to the level and distribution of school spending affect the distribution of worker quality and of income. The substantial differences in spending across states are not significantly related to the variations in achievement growth across states. Further, the three decade old movement toward reducing the variation in school spending within states appears to have done nothing to reduce subsequent income variations of workers. Thus, the direct government policies toward school spending, as carried out in the past, have not ameliorated inequalities in incomes.
Do Higher Salaries Buy Better Teachers?
Full text linkImportant policy decisions rest on the relationship between teacher salaries and the quality of teachers, but the evidence about the strength of any such relationship is thin. This paper relies upon the matched panel data of the UTD Texas School Project to investigate how shifts in salary schedules affect the composition of teachers within a district. The panel data permit separation of shifts in salary schedules from movement along given schedules, and thus the analysis is much more closely related to existing policy proposals. In analyses both of teacher mobility and of student performance, teacher salaries are shown to have a modest impact. Teacher mobility is more affected by characteristics of the students (income, race, and achievement) than by salary schedules. Salaries are also weakly related to performance on teacher certification tests appearing to be relevant only in districts doing high levels of hiring, but preliminary examination shows that the certification tests are not significantly related to student achievement. The only significant relationship between salaries and student achievement holds (implausibly) for existing experienced teachers and not for new hires or for probationary teachers.
New Evidence about Brown v. Board of Education: The Complex Effects
Full text linkUncovering the effect of school racial composition is difficult because racial mixing is not accidental but instead an outcome of government and family choices. Using rich panel data on the achievement of Texas students, we disentangle racial composition effects from other aspects of school quality and from differences in abilities and family background. The estimates strongly indicate that a higher percentage of black schoolmates reduces achievement for blacks, while it implies a much smaller and generally insignificant effect on whites. These reJohn F. Kain fully participated in this research, but sadly he died before its publication. An early version of this article was presented at the Brookings Conference on Empirics of Social Interactions (January 2000). Our thanks to conference participants, David Armor, Phil Cook, Jonah Gelbach, Caroline Hoxby, and Jens Ludwig for helpful comments. Support for this work has been provided by the Spencer Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, the Smith Richardson Foundation, and the Packard Humanities Institute. Contact the corresponding author, Eric A. Hanushek, at [email protected]. 350 Hanushek et al. sults suggest that existing levels of segregation in Texas explain a small but meaningful portion of the racial achievement gap
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