Thoughts on "Waiting for Superman"

Watched this documentary about five students' attempts to enroll in charter schools in various cities across the country.  One wins the lottery, another gets in via waiting list and the other three -- well, tough luck kid but we have a failing public school that has a guaranteed spot for you. 

From an economic standpoint, the most frustrating aspect of the movie is that there is clear excess demand for innovative, academically-focused schools but school boards across the country fail to provide such schools.  We see the same thing here in Wake County with Raleigh Charter and magnet schools such as Enloe.  I wonder what will happen in Wake County once we finally have a new student assignment plan -- will regular schools start to offer courses currently restricted to magnets? 

I do not pretend to be an expert in education research, but I am skeptical of the movie's persistent claim that "we know what works."  This would be a first in any field of social science research.  It is heartening to see academically successful schools in tough neighborhoods.  But I am skeptical about how much this can be scaled.  The parents of these five students really cared about their children's education.  Not all do. 

One labor market quibble: there was a graphic that claimed we would more than double the number of high-paying high-tech STEM jobs if the public schools would simply supply enough tech-savvy graduates -- not sure where they got that.

I give the movie a "thumbs up;" I hope the issues it raises get a wide airing.

International test scores

Lots of attention given to the poor showing of the US and the high marks received by China in the latest round of high school test results for 65 countries.  The US scores in math, science, and reading were all near the global average, whereas the scores from Shanghai were the world's highest on each dimension.  Of course, Shanghai is the wealthiest city in China and these results are likely to be much higher than those for China overall (remember China is still primarily rural).  Korea, Finland and Singapore were also consistently near the top. 

One finding of this study that deserves further attention is the results for Canada, which placed between 6th and 10th place, again well ahead of the US.  Many commentators blame teachers unions for the poor performance of the US in this type of exercise, while ignoring the fact that a number of states (including North Carolina) are nonunion and manage to have lousy test scores.  Another fact that some countries seem to do just fine (e.g., Finland) even though they have teacher unions.  The Canadian system of higher education shares some similarities, including teacher unions, with the US.  Why are the Canadians accomplishing so much more?  My guess -- and it is just a guess -- lower poverty rates and higher expectations of students. 

Everything important I learned in kindergarten

Today's NYT summarizes research by a team of five economists on the long term impact of early childhood programs.  The title gets your attention: "The Case for $320,000 Kindergarten Teachers."  To get a hold on the old question of whether class size affects learning, Tennessee assigned students randomly to kindergarten classes many years ago, with the classes varying significantly in size.  There were profound differences in learning; students in small classes learned more at the end of the year than those in large classes.  However as the students were tracked in later years the learning differences washed out, based on test score analysis.  Conclusion: good kindergarten teachers and small classes can help in the short term but they have no lasting effect.

The more recent research asks a broader and, I believe, more relevant question: are there any differences in adult outcomes that can be related to different kindergarten environments? The five researchers find that students who learned the most in kindergarten were more likely to have graduated from college, less likely to be single parents, more likely to be saving toward their retirement, and were earning more than those who learned the least.  Perhaps the most important lessons of kindergarten (the article notes "patience, discipline, manners, perseverance") are the most valuable for later in life. 

MBA students as customers

Columnist Greg Burns takes on this touchy subject in Sunday's Chicago Tribune, while NYT online has five guest columnists expressing their views. Business schools face a much more competitive environment in student recruitment than other units on campus, as indicated by their aggressive marketing efforts. To make talk match walk, b-schools definitely need to have current students and alums say good things about the program. But what is the best way to do this? Clearly different schools have chosen different paths. Ed Snyder, dean at Chicago, thinks the obligation of the school is to provide a challenging educational experience with excellent professional support. David Bejou, dean at Elizabeth City State, has a different take:

The goal should be shared governance, he said, with faculty, students and staff working together. "You need to understand what this new generation wants," he said. And it's not "a faculty member with white hair and a tie standing at a blackboard trying to write a formula."

At NC State, we certainly take student feedback from focus groups, teaching evaluations and the annual student survey very seriously. But I do not expect to add any students to voting slots on the curriculum committee any time soon.

Tom Friedman on today's labor market

As we head further into the worst labor market in at least 30 years, some patterns are beginning to emerge. Something I keep hearing over and over again is that a college degree of any type is no longer enough. Whether it is undergraduate electrical engineers, MBAs, or law students, employers have never had so much discretion in hiring decisions. They can write the job description of an ideal job candidate and get exactly what they want without too much trouble.

In his latest NYT column Tom Friedman notes what the MBA program hears constantly from employers --

Those who are waiting for this recession to end so someone can again hand them work could have a long wait. Those with the imagination to make themselves untouchables — to invent smarter ways to do old jobs, energy-saving ways to provide new services, new ways to attract old customers or new ways to combine existing technologies — will thrive. Therefore, we not only need a higher percentage of our kids graduating from high school and college — more education — but we need more of them with the right education. ...

Just being an average accountant, lawyer, contractor or assembly-line worker is not the ticket it used to be. As Daniel Pink, the author of “A Whole New Mind,” puts it: In a world in which more and more average work can be done by a computer, robot or talented foreigner faster, cheaper “and just as well,” vanilla doesn’t cut it anymore. It’s all about what chocolate sauce, whipped cream and cherry you can put on top. So our schools have a doubly hard task now — not just improving reading, writing and arithmetic but entrepreneurship, innovation and creativity.

What have b-schools learned from the crisis?

Precious little, according to an article in this week's Economist magazine. A new course here, an ethics pledge there, and not much more. Actually this piece is much more balanced than most journalistic attempts to bemoan the fate of b-schools. It even points to economic research showing that companies using "widely accepted management techniques" outperform those who make less intensive or zero use of such techniques. This might even mean that MBAs earn more money than non-MBAs because they contribute more!

A couple of stimulating ideas mentioned in the article: (1) more economic and business history should be covered -- the recent financial crisis is all too similar to those that preceded it; (2) faculty and students should be a bit more skeptical about what management techniques can and cannot do.

The original sin of business schools is boosterism. Professors are always inclined to puff the businesses that provide them, at the very least, with their raw materials and, if they are lucky, with lucrative consultancy work.

Business schools need to make more room for people who are willing to bite the hands that feed them: to prick business bubbles, expose management fads and generally rough up the most feted managers. Kings once employed jesters to bring them down to earth. It’s time for business schools to do likewise.

Notes on "The Class"

I recently saw "The Class," an autobiographical quasi-documentary about a year in the life of a French grammar class in a Parisian middle school. It is based on a book written by a teacher and the author actually plays the lead in the movie. The movie follows a group of about 30-35 students, all of whom were real students at the school. There was no formal script, instead the movie is based on improvs of certain situations described in the book. Just available via Netflix.

What I found fascinating was the depiction of the French school system and its students. In one scene the faculty is reviewing the academic performance of the students, subject by subject, at the end of the semester. Two students were seated in the room as observers. Although sworn to keep the discussion confidential, they share the discussion with all of their classmates. Certain students have "issues," as one would expect, but the system seems to do little more than shift the worst cases from one school to another.

Most striking was the composition of the class; a clear majority were either immigrants or children of immigrants, a large share of whom were from Africa or Islamic countries. (And this was a school in Paris itself; not one of the suburbs which have predominantly immigrant populations.) This movie shows us the face of France 20-30 years from now. My guess is that a film set in Denmark, Spain or almost any other European country would have the same message. These countries are going to be facing some big changes as their native populations decline and immigration continues apace. Economics can provide a useful framework for explaining employment, GDP, immigration patterns and the like, but I am not sure our profession will have a whole lot to say about the cultural consequences.