First Post
This blog is mostly going to focus on economics and education policy issues. I am an economics PhD student at Michigan State university, and I have mostly worked on teacher value-added (using student...
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What would happen if we increase teacher wages from $65,000 to $150,000?
In today's Washington Post, there is an article on teacher unions (click on link to go to article) and how they operate differently in other countries. The article mentions that many nations with the...
View ArticleWill teacher merit pay raise student achievement?
There has been a push recently to give teachers merit pay for increasing student test scores. In fact, I think both presidential candidates support it. There is some pretty nice theory supporting the...
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Age Ain't Nothing But a Number
There was an interesting article in Sunday New York Times on political and economic differences between generations.The article's main focus is on differences in voter preferences and how a large chunk...
View ArticleEmbarrassing Fact of the Day
Felix Salmon has an article on how economists get tripped up by statistics. See if you can solve the problem. Apparently 72% of professional economists at leading universities not only got the...
View ArticleTeacher Merit Pay Might Raise Student Achievement After All
A few weeks ago, I wrote a post on whether teacher merit pay is effective at increasing student achievement. I felt that the evidence was pretty weak for the whole idea.Lo and behold, a new paper came...
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Algebra Problems
There is an article in the New York Times on whether algebra should be something that students are required to master. The author doesn't think so.His main point is that algebra just isn't that useful...
View ArticleChicago Teacher's Strike
Here is a good summary of what the two sides are fighting over.A lot of the disagreement involves the use of value added measures based on student test scores to evaluate teachers. I will try to post...
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