Food prices and children in the classroom

Virtually every day we hear and see in the news stories about the consequences of soaring food prices around the world. We'd like to draw attention to one: less education for those who need it most, the poor. An article by Gene Sperling, an education specialist, economic adviser and Bloomberg News columnist, highlights the connection between food prices stretching the resources of school feeding programs to the breaking point - and thus leading to the programs being dropped or severely scaled back - and fewer kids going to school, and having the energy to learn there. Studies show that school feeding leads to increased ability to concentrate, improved cognition, better short-term memory and verbal fluency, and ultimately, higher overall achievement. (Not too surprising if you think about what happens to your own performance - in whatever you are doing - when you are hungry!) School feeding programs are also a proven positive incentive for poor parents to send their children to school, when they are considering alternative uses of their children's time. The tripling and quadrupling of food prices has an impact that goes way beyond family budgets. Read the article at http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aUGJDvGYnvTg

Turkish private schools

In Pakistan and other countries a Turkish network of schools offers an alternative approach to the influence of Islamic extremism. The system is an alternative to public schools where radicalism influences teaching. This model is run by a private organization that seeks to blend both science and religion in private schools. The model recognizes Islam as an integral part of the communities it serves and includes it in the curriculum.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/04/world/asia/04islam.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

Do boys and girls learn better, separately?

In March the cover story of the New York Times magazine featured the subject of single-gender classrooms, and schools. The article states that new single-sex public schools, and classrooms within public schools, are opening in the United States at an accelerating rate. New Department of education regulations accompanying the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act made it easier for school districts to create classrooms and schools that serve only boys or only girls, and more school administrators are turning to this approach as they struggle to achieve the results that the NCLB is aimed at.

The article explores some of the people and ideas motivating 2 camps of educators and researchers advocating single-sex education: one camp favoring the separation of boys and girls because they are fundamentally different in learning styles and needs (e.g. brain development is different), and the other because they have different social experiences and social needs, which affects the context in which they are best able to learn. Against both of them is the American Civil Liberties Union, which opposes single-sex education for any reason, on the basis of equal protection of equal rights. The article describes several examples of the apparently positive effects single-sex education is having in various classrooms and schools around the country. That being said, the amount of conclusive research on its effects is extremely limited - though studies based on Catholic schools which have a long history of single-sex institutions suggest that single-sex education does measurably benefit poor and minority students. Link to article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/02/magazine/02sex3-t.html?ex=1363838400&en=3c85cf34c847d0a6&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

Lowering the cost of college

Colleges in the US have been reducing the cost of education by replacing loans with grants or by simply waiving tuition. Many colleges have been implementing a number of policies in support of low-income students. The elimination of loans is a critical instrument to motivate low-income students to apply to schools where tuition was an insurmountable barrier. Research shows that earnings of college graduates from low-income families are higher if they attend an elite school.

David Leonhardt's article in the Times shows the income levels used by several colleges to eliminate loans in favor of grants and scholarships. For example, at Harvard, if parents less than $60,000 parents will not have to pay anything (click on the image to see a bigger chart).

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/education/edlife/essay.html?_r=1&scp=3&sq=david+leonhardt&st=nyt&oref=slogin

Making better teachers, and merit pay

The cover story of the February 25, 2008 edition of Time magazine was 'How to Make Better Teachers', and looked at the concept of merit pay for teachers.

It may be slightly shocking to the uninitiated to realize that as a rule, in the United States and many other countries, teachers are not rewarded for good performance.  Teacher's salaries generally are a function of seniority, and rise only with cost of living increases and years on the job.  Thus they are paid more like hourly factory workers than like the professionals they are or should be.  

In the past, efforts to introduce the element of merit into teacher pay structures in the United States have failed, in large part due to the resistance of teacher's unions which were reacting to insufficient transparency in how merit was judged and questions about the methodology used to measure teacher performance.  Today, merit pay is viewed by many as an obvious solution to the critical, dual problems of teacher quality and teacher turnover that plague school systems in the US and other, much poorer countries.  In the US, more data on student achievement, thanks to the universal annual testing mandates of the No Child Left Behind Act, and the work of statisticians, notably William Sanders of the University of Tennessee, are leading to improved methods to meaningfully assess the value-added of teachers' instruction based on the results of student test scores.  And the best systems to reward performance that are now being tried look at more than one measure of how teachers do their job.  

According to the article, a successful merit pay program not only involves teachers in its development, adoption, and application, but will also entail multiple methods to measure merit, clarity about what those methods are, offer rewards for teamwork and school-wide success, and reliable financing to fund the merit pay rewards.  Two very promising programs the article mentions are ProComp and the Teacher Advancement Program, or TAP.  TAP is more than a merit pay program, in that it also offers promising teachers multiple career paths besides the usual path into school administration, the chance to support and learn from their peers on a regular and consistent basis, and have a voice in decision-making.  These are among the strengths that are evident in the teaching preparation and profession in the countries that lead the rest of the world in student achievement.  

We agree with the article's argument that the choice to seriously invest in teacher preparation and merit pay, as these countries do, is a keystone of achieving high-quality education.  Here is the link to the article:  

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1713174,00.html

The importance of using Metrics

The NYT featured an article on the importance of using metrics to estimate the impact of philanthropic giving. Somewhat buried in that article is a comment by Warren Buffet stating that philanthropies are "tackling problems that have resisted great intellect and lots of money." It is somewhat puzzling to observe the lack of funds channeled by these organizations to prove the effectiveness of charitable giving. Especially considering the amount of money they are investing.

Our view is that nonprofits have a very limited yet catalytic impact in a society where government has the mandate to provide certain public goods (like education and health). Therefore, the best use of every grant is to facilitate changes in public programs and support innovation in the social sector. Our organization champions the use of scientific methods to estimate the impact of an additional dollar spent on education. We do not claim to have the right answer but simply claim to be looking for the right answers.


http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/09/magazine/09metrics-t.html

How many billionaires? A debate on new education philanthropy

The March 9 issue of the New York Times Magazine, the annual “Money Issue”, covers recent directions in philanthropy. We find a couple of articles particularly interesting, and highlight one of them here.

How Many Billionaires Does it Take to Fix a School System?

The New York Times (NYT) interviewed five individuals with various roles in the field to discuss the ‘new world of education philanthropy’. An editor of the NYT Magazine interviewed them on the premise that a hypothetical technology entrepreneur wants to give away $2 billion to primary and secondary education in the United States, and is asking them for guidance. Their suggestions centered on:
Identify and invest in select ‘disruptive forces’, for example, strong urban school superintendents and chancellors, and charter school managers. Look for the change agents and invest in 3 or 4 of them around the country.
Focus on the soft infrastructure, the human resources and information systems, organizational data, legal and business incentives that effective organizations need to produce results and grow.
It’s about outcomes, not inputs. Measure learning gains, graduation rates, job readiness, ultimately even economic competitiveness and growth. Organize giving around a specific city or region in order to more readily measure a set of student outcomes.
Don’t ignore public policy as an area to invest in, as well as change agents. Hire people to inform legislators, raise public awareness and activism, and build alliances. While indirect and long-term, this work can have incredible leverage and helps create the future where the investments can be taken to scale through good public policy.
Be unafraid. You are needed. Some of the most important and controversial elements in improving education outcomes – e.g. teacher pay, working conditions, school choice – probably can’t be changed without the leveraging, disruptive force of private philanthropy.

Link to the article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/09/magazine/09roundtable-t.html?ex=1362718800&en=e530f25d6d33a430&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

But, could or should an educational philanthropist also try to promote a change in popular culture that raises the degree to which learning and knowledge is valued and prioritized, in homes and on the street in the US? The influence of modeling behavior by parents and other caretakers is well known. How big an impact do values modeled in television, music and other mediums of popular culture have on how well and how much children want to learn? Flawed education systems and a popular culture that values materialism and objectification more than knowledge can each contribute to unacceptably low learning outcomes. Just one other potential idea for education philanthropists…

Will Cash get students to study more?

The NYT featured a program in Manhattan that is paying children who improve their performance in standardized tests. The program also offers cash for teachers whose students improve their test scores.

The value of the program relies on its ability to generate evidence of its own performance. The program could be designed as an experiment by including a group of schools with similar characteristics but do not participate in it. By comparing these two groups , one can obtain an estimate of the impact of the program. This would allow us to take more informed decisions about how to invest in education and get a higher social return.

Most importantly, this program seems to target studying to improve test performance but it is hard to imagine how this program alone could create an environment conducive to learning and gaining knowledge.

Here is the article.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/05/nyregion/05incentive.html?ref=todayspaper

"The Economic Case for Early Education"--U. Chicago

Investing in education at an early stage of life for disadvantaged children is no longer simply socially responsible, but is in fact economically sound as well.

Looking at a range of indicators from economic growth to tax payers' savings, Heckman argues that investing in elementary education proves cost-effective in the long run. He proposes to choose early investments over remedial programs at later stages of life.  In truth, Heckman is not saying anything new: educated youth are more likely to continue their educations, get a job and stay out of jail than their uneducated peers. But if the disparities in opportunities between races and classes were not enough of an incentive to invest in education for our marginalized populations, perhaps the promise of more social return for the investment of our taxes is.

Check out the article that explains James Heckman's argument HERE.

Investing in Good Deeds without checking the prospectus

So we found a very interesting article about charitable giving. Here are two paragraphs from a NYT article published in June 2006.

Professor List's work more generally suggests that people become rational in their spending only through the repeated experience of trading in markets. This trial-and-error process, with the accompanying feedback, is absent when people give money to a distant charity. Once the money is gone, donors do not personally bear direct costs from bad charitable decisions. Nor is it easy to learn what went wrong.

Professor List has yet to delve into the specifics of donor motives, but the obvious conclusion is that donors do not behave like customers. Customers take great care to learn about the merits of different expenditures, on cars or on homes, for example.

We are now tempted to run several experiments in our fundraising efforts.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/15/business/15scene.html?ex=1308024000&en=db43cea7a6f2b14b&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss