The FREAK-est Links
Are stressed out teachers more likely to expel students? Is the mafia involved in tennis match rigging? (Earlier) Is grass the best source of ethanol? (Earlier) Is Rock, Paper, Scissors the best way to pick a president?
Are stressed out teachers more likely to expel students? Is the mafia involved in tennis match rigging? (Earlier) Is grass the best source of ethanol? (Earlier) Is Rock, Paper, Scissors the best way to pick a president?
Just how liberal are college professors? Becker and Posner discuss. Study shows hospital staffs lag in responding to cardiac arrests. Most free drug samples go to the wealthy and insured. Indian prime minister pledges a “quantum jump” in science education.
That’s the assertion made by James Heckman and Paul LaFontaine in a new working paper called “The American High School Graduation Rate: Trends and Levels.” Here is their abstract: This paper uses multiple data sources and a unified methodology to estimate the trends and levels of the U.S. high school graduation rate. Correcting for important biases that plague previous calculations, . . .
Here’s the latest guest post from Yale economist and law professor Ian Ayres. Here are Ayres’s past posts and here is a recent discussion of standardized tests. A recent article in the Times trumpeted the results of a report that had just been released by the Educational Testing Service (E.T.S.). The E.T.S. researchers used four variables that are beyond the . . .
What should be done about the quality and quantity of standardized testing in U.S. schools? We touched on the subject in Freakonomics, but only insofar as the introduction of high-stakes testing altered the incentives at play — including the incentives for some teachers, who were found to cheat in order to cover up the poor performance of their students (which, . . .
Economics and rapping wouldn’t seem to be the most natural bedfellows, but they keep showing up on this blog, including here and here. But this latest instance is probably also the best.
A while back, I solicited your suggestions for great children’s books, and you responded mightily, with more than 270 comments. Your answers made me realize how many children’s books we already own, which is probably a good thing, at least according to these guys. But you also suggested a lot of books we’ve never read, and you made them sound . . .
South Africa has had, for the last dozen years, what may be the world’s most difficult driver’s license exam. It’s an exercise in extremely defensive driving. Test examiners take off points for, among other things, failure to check all mirrors every seven seconds. An applicant can fail instantly if he lets his car roll backwards even an inch when stopping . . .
Are performance-based pay structures partly to blame for the mortgage crisis? Do our tastes in entertainment correspond to our political views? Do behavioral problems in kindergarten affect future school performance? Are there hazards to washing your hands? (Earlier)
From today’s Times: Mayor Bloomberg has approved a major facet of Roland Fryer‘s program for making learning “cool” for inner-city kids.
Economist Roland Fryer has done research on “acting white,” i.e. the phenomenon by which black children who excel academically are stigmatized by their peers. Recently, he was in a New York City school and asked some of the seventh graders he was talking to whether they had ever heard the phrase “acting white.” The kids laughed at him and said, . . .
More parents claiming religious exemptions for preschool vaccinations School choice at work in Ghana How will changes in accounting regulations affect U.S. auditors’ incentives?
Is ticket scalping really so bad? Are staph infections killing more Americans than AIDS? Parents now paying up to $40,000 to beat the college admissions process. (Earlier) Which careers correspond to the highest depression rates?
Online education is seriously on the rise, garnering praise from congressmen and even gaining share among elementary school students. In the realm of higher education, more and more schools are offering online degree programs as an alternative to in-class courses, with some schools creating online-only engineering and law degrees as well as bachelors’. But have you ever wondered who’s on . . .
Public school or private school: does it matter? Test security firm Caveon sees business thrive at U.S. schools. (Earlier) Employers impose “no e-mail” days; workers rebel. Are antidepressants safe for children?
Is the U.S. “war on cancer” focusing on the wrong things? Britain studies the economic impact of higher education. Chinese-made Cub Scout badges recalled for lead. (HT: Consumerist) Identity data: the newest hot commodity for businesses. (Earlier)
There is no policy economists love more than school choice. Milton Friedman was an early proponent. The idea certainly makes sense: if parents have the ability to choose the best schools for their children, outcomes should improve through both the better matching of kids to specific schools and the resulting competition that would force schools to develop their programs. The . . .
Is the cutthroat college process good for kids? (Earlier) Smuggling ring busted for cashing in on out-of-state cans. (Earlier) What’s the most important psychology experiment that has yet to be performed?
You never know when you are going to get a tough question like this one.
It sounds as if Barack Obama has been listening to some economists (maybe even Austan Goolsbee): he has come out in favor of merit pay for schoolteachers. From an A.P. article: Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama told the largest teachers union Thursday that performance-based merit pay ought to be considered in public schools. Teachers at the National Education Association’s annual . . .
My friend and co-author Roland Fryer, an assistant professor at Harvard, has just been promoted. Usually, for an academic, that would mean getting tenure. For Roland, it is a little different. He’s been named a CEO — not Chief Executive Officer, but rather Chief Equality Officer for the New York Public Schools system. You can read about it in this . . .
From reader Paul O’Keef: Architectural Record reports that India’s richest man is building a sixty-story house for his family, including six floors for parking, a health club and a rooftop helipad. The University of Georgia is offering a new incentive to make student-athletes show up for class: fining them $10 per unexcused absence. In the policy’s first month, the number . . .
Looks like all that time spent on MySpace could start earning you college credits. Via Andrew Lavallee at the Wall Street Journal: More and more universities are incorporating curricula on social computing, allowing students to study subjects like online communities, social networking and user-contributed content as part of graduate and undergrad programs. This month in Scientific American, Cornell economics professor . . .
I have a favorite thought exercise, especially when thinking about the sort of complex, dynamic systems that are interesting but difficult to write about: the health-care system, e.g., or education, politics, energy consumption, finance, cancer research, etc. One natural way to approach such systems is to take note of what inputs and outputs already exist and then, isolating them, try . . .
We couldn’t help but notice that the New York Times has devoted an awful lot of column inches recently to the brutal process that teens face when applying to the country’s most prestigious colleges. Looks like we weren’t the only ones who noticed: To the Editor: I have noticed several articles in The Times on how difficult it is to . . .
As someone who’s never taken an accounting course in my life, I have often thought about doing so. But I’ve always managed to find a way to put it off. There are probably a lot of people out there like me — people who never had a burning desire to learn accounting but who, given the increasing complexity of personal . . .
Oprah Winfrey speaking at Howard University while receiving an honorary degree: “[My grandmother] was a maid and worked for white folks her whole life….She used to say I hope you get some good white folks that are kind to you. I regret that she didn’t live past 1963 to see that I did grow up and get some really good . . .
I was recently at a Hyatt hotel in Lost Pines, Texas. The posted speed limit on one stretch of road was 11 mph. In another area, it was 19 mph. Very clever. My guess is that if you did a randomized experiment, actual driving speeds would be lower with the 11 mph speed limit than the more familiar 10 mph . . .
There is a large body of literature on cultural bias in standardized testing. It generally has two components: 1. In some questions, white people are made to look superior to minorities. 2. In some questions, there is a presumption of knowledge that is more likely to be held by whites than minorities, providing white students with a hidden advantage. But . . .
A recent study by the ad agency BBDO Worldwide links habitual behavior to product brands. While the findings — that people adopt daily rituals like tooth brushing or midday snacking and typically stick to the same brands while performing them — aren’t very surprising, the methodology is impressive: nine months of ethnographic research in 26 countries, 2,500 hours of documented . . .