Econ 309 Education

Link to slides

• Thomas Schelling tipping point model of segregation (video)

• Key & Peele on TeachingCenter (Priceless)

• States are generally supposed to balance their budgets.  Hoovers!  

• The State of Illinois is in terrible fiscal trouble.  (New York Times, July 3, 2010)

• What has destroyed the budgets of Evanston, Illinois, California, and most other states and cities?  GODZILLA!

• Where do states get their money?  Taxes of various sorts, and the federal government (New York Times, August 2010)

• Unfunded mandates for Northwestern's fraternities and sororities (Daily Northwestern, February 10, 2011)

Education is unbelievably important.

• • At the K-12 levels, education is generally provided very locally.  American neighborhoods are very segregated by race and income.  Nobel Prize winner Thomas Schelling had a clever "tipping point" model of this where people don't want to be "too much" in the minority.  The results from this model can lead to surprising levels of segregation.  Here is a great demonstration of his model.

• Milton Friedman on educational vouchers

• PISA comparative test scores show Shanghai doing incredibly well...and the US not.  (New York Times, December 7, 2010)

  • But the US has actually aways been pretty bad in these international comparisons, and if anything, we're getting better (Kevin Drum, Mother Jones,  February 2011)

• Evanston Township High School fails NCLB again.  (Daily Northwestern, October 25, 2010)

• Edward Glaeser on the powerful effects of education on GDP per capita, even at long lags

• The relation of spending and outcomes in education (Matt Yglesias, February 16, 2011)

• Claudia Golden and Lawrence Katz:  "The Race Between Education and Technology" (2008)

  • Reviewed by Joel Kotkin and by Nicholas Kristoff 

For interest:  

• Amazon is a tax scam (Slate, July 12, 2011)

• Chicago is incredibly segregated (Chicago Reader, February 10, 2011)

• How dirty is the market for municipal bonds?  "Fresh Air in the Muni Market" (New York Times, August 30, 2009)

Education:

• "Campbell's Law", alternatively "Goodhart's Law"

  • Goodhart's Law and Education (Eduardo Porter, New York Times, March 25, 2015)

• Teachers are still cheating!  Hasn't Freakonomics taught them anything?

  • More teacher cheating!  (New York Times, June 10, 2010)

• How important is education for OECD countries?  (Eric Hanushek and Ludger Woessmann, November 2010, NBER 16515)

• "Segregation and Tiebout Tipping:  Investigating the Link between Investments in Public Goods and Neighborhood Tipping" (H. Spencer Banzhaf and Randall P. Walsh, June 2010, NBER 16057)

• US Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics "The Nation's Report Card" 2009 Mathematics

• Chicago Public Schools Data - Test scores, income levels, racial make-up

• Illinois Public School Report Cards

• Some Evanston parents not so happy about having their kids in "mixed ability" classrooms.  (Daily, Oct. 10, 2009)

• The Black/White achievement gap in public schools is just staggering.  (Council of the Great City Schools)

  • New York Times, November 9, 2010

• When did it get so hard to fire a public school teacher?  (Slate, July 6, 2010)

• Arne Duncan:  Masters Degrees for teachers are a big waste of money  (Washington Post, November 20, 2010)

• How much do teachers get paid?  Wow, I hope this isn't right.  (New Republic, July 16, 2010)

• Baumol's "Cost Disease of the Service Sector" and teacher pay (Matt Yglesias, February 14, 2011)

• How do we evaluate teachers?  Value added?  (New York Times, August 31, 2010)

• Are smaller schools better?  Maybe not.  (Marginal Revolution, September 6, 2010)

• How does the US compare with other OECD nations for class size?  How about teacher pay?

• How Beverly Hills High School is dealing with the problem of outside students enrolling (New York Times, January 13, 2010)

• School Desegregation and Urban Change:  Evidence from City Boundaries (Leah Platt Boustan, NBER #16434, October 2010)

• No Child Left Behind (NCLB) raises math scores (So says NU sociologist Thomas Cook)

• New York City schools keep their worst teachers in a "rubber room."   (The New Yorker, August 31, 2009)

• Catalyst Chicago - "Independent reporting on school reform since 1990"

• Paul Tough's book, Whatever It Takes:  Geoffrey Canada's Quest to Change Harlem and America (Sept. 2009)

• Tracy Kidder, Among Schoolchildren (1990)  An incredible narrative about teaching low-income 5th graders.  Here it is on Google Books.

• How do we spot "good" teachers?  (Malcolm Gladwell, The New Yorker, Dec. 15, 2008)

For amusement:

• Overfunded Public School Forced to Add Jazz Band  (The Onion)

• The government role in education...on alternate Earth!