Links for 10/4/10

Jay P. Greene

as a graduate student observed to me today, choice (in the form of vouchers) may have lost Sol Stern, but choice (in the form of charters) just gained Oprah, the Today Show, and the Democratic Party platform. Overall, he thought that was a pretty good trade, especially since he had to look up who Sol Stern was.

Let’s review. It is now commonly accepted among mainstream elites — from Oprah to Matt Lauer to Arne Duncan — that simply pouring more money into the public school system will not produce the results we want. It is now commonly accepted that the teacher unions have been a significant barrier to school improvement by protecting ineffective teachers and opposing meaningful reforms. It is now commonly accepted that parents should have a say in where their children go to school and this choice will push traditional public schools to improve. It is now commonly accepted that we have to address the incentives in the school system to recruit, retain, and motivate the best educators…

Lloyd Armstrong

As developing countries build their higher education sectors, many see the "US-style university" as the desired model…

Many countries considering this model do not have the base of the pyramid in place. Without it, the elite university cannot effectively play the role that its proponents assume. And last but not least, this is the most expensive model of higher education ever invented. Combining research and teaching may have benefits, but it also has high costs… Even the US is finding that it can no longer afford this model…

Chad Aldeman

The NEPC, while critiquing think tanks…

First, policy is made by a bunch of non-experts…

Research, unfortunately, is pretty murky stuff. Does Teach for America work? What about professional development? Charter schools? There are studies on either side of all of these debates…

Second, policy gets made in real time. When an oil rig blows up off the Gulf Coast, someone has to be there trying to clean it up right away. They don’t have time to run a carefully controlled experiment to figure out the best way to stop the leak and clean up the gulf…

Joanne Jacobs

For-profit higher education is a bargain for the taxpayers, concludes an industry-funded study by economists Robert Shapiro and Nam Pham…

Is the study just industry spin? Shapiro, who served as undersecretary of Commerce in the Clinton administration and advised the Obama transition team, says, “My reputation speaks for itself.” All the data comes from the National Center for Education Statistics, Shapiro says. “The rest is arithmetic.”…