tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5458172893016186479.post7535043679915444960..comments2024-03-09T03:28:44.216-05:00Comments on Thoughts on Education Policy: Evaluating the Evidence on Non-School InterventionsCorey Bunje Bowerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09764159604965707919noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5458172893016186479.post-25634531770654507482012-02-21T12:15:35.311-05:002012-02-21T12:15:35.311-05:00I have no doubt that school affects people in vari...I have no doubt that school affects people in various ways. What I'm not sure of is exactly what, and how much. I suspect that for many things the answer is, "not much."<br /><br />Since school takes thousands of hours from young people's lives, and since many of them find it painful, I think it is important to be clear on exactly what it is accomplishing.<br /><br />(Now, for many people the "take thousands of hours" is a feature, not a bug. This is part of the "day care" function of schools. Give kids a safe, structured place to go for 7 hours a day, where they won't be exposed to bad ideas and temptations, and where they will engage in pro-social activities that will help them grow up into better people. For example, as you mention, it's hard to get pregnant if there's an adult watching you all the time.<br /><br />To some of us who aren't in academia, that raises the question of whether there are ways to get the good day care stuff without subjecting lots of people to frustration and failure, and others to seemingly endless cycles of memorizing and forgetting in the name of learning. Are there less "academic" alternatives to traditional school?)<br /><br />Nobody doubts that more years of school are correlated with all the things you say they are. But correlation is only a starting point. Which way does the direction of causation run? To the extent that causation runs from schooling to good outcomes, how important it it (e.g. does it reduce the teen pregnancy rate from 10 to 5 or from 10 to 9.9?) How much does some third factor cause both the additional years and the good outcomes? (I haven't read it but I gather that <i>The Bell Curve</i> argued that lots of good things are caused by IQ.)<br /><br /><br />If you put sea weed on your indoor English Ivy and leave it off your outdoor marigolds and then find that the ivy grows considerably better, it is NOT legitimate to say, "People should put sea weed on all their plants because it helps them grow."<br /><br />A well-controlled experiment would require lots of pairs of plants, where both members of each pair got the same sun, water, amount of room, etc.--where the only difference between the members was getting or not getting seaweed.<br /><br />In any non-experimental study, you try to "control" for differences by statistically manipulating the data you have about your subjects. Unfortunately, you never have data on all the things you should control for. In fact, you never even know what all the things you should control for are.<br /><br />If you do some simple statistical analysis, you find out that overweight people have a lower death rate than people who are not overweight. Does this mean that overweight people are healthier? Probably not. Most people who die have been declining for a while, and part of that decline often involves losing weight.<br /><br />I have very little contact with the primary literature that purports to show that schooling does all sorts of wonderful things. What I have seen does a poor job of controlling for all the other things that affect life outcomes. So perhaps I am complaining out of ignorance. Perhaps it does control nicely.<br /><br />(I was about to hit publish when the question occurred to me, "Have any studies tried to untangle the effects of academic knowledge and the "day care" effects of school? How much does a better life outcome come from things like knowing the law of conservation of mass, and how much from the structure school provides, the reward for following directions and such?" Again, I am ignorant.)Roger Sweenyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12734128265493099062noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5458172893016186479.post-36118709168416672572012-02-20T05:18:55.154-05:002012-02-20T05:18:55.154-05:00Roger,
You're not wrong to question the influ...Roger,<br /><br />You're not wrong to question the influence of schools in the sense that those with the most supports at home tend to both enter and leave as the highest achievers.<br /><br />But you're taking it a step too far by asking whether schooling really has any effect on students at all. Causation and correlation are certainly difficult to untangle, but we have decades of research that consistently find that additional years of schooling lead to all sorts of positive outcomes in a variety of ways.<br /><br />Additional schooling increases the knowledge and aptitude levels of students, gives them more exposure to potential mentors, makes them more informed citizens, gives them something productive on which to spend their time, makes them more attractive candidates on the job market (both due to the "sheepskin effects" of the diploma and due to the increased skills), and a million other things.<br /><br />Yes, attending school develops self-control and self-discipline -- without which one cannot sit quietly in a classroom or complete a term paper. Yes, attending school improves health outcomes when a student is able to make better and more informed choices and their occupation affords them better health care. Yes, attending school decreases teen pregnancy rates as students both have less leisure time and more concrete immediate plans. And we could discuss another hundred examples as well.<br /><br />Now, I'll be the first to argue that other areas of one's life often impact these factors more than do schools -- but that's a different argument than saying that schooling does affect any of these. Certainly schools can't do everything -- and what they do do, they can do better -- but there's really no question that more schooling positively impacts the average student in myriad ways.Corey Bunje Bowerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09764159604965707919noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5458172893016186479.post-4900551934822593362012-02-19T08:29:31.486-05:002012-02-19T08:29:31.486-05:001) Why should "raising the education levels o...1) Why should "raising the education levels of the population ... result in people with better self-control, better health" any more than raising the participation on high school basketball teams result in a generally taller population?<br /><br />In some very broad sense ("a sound mind in a sound body") becoming educated involves better self-control, taking better care of oneself, etc. However, I am not at all sure that increased years of <i>schooling</i> leads to that. A truly intrusive school, that seriously attempted to "educate the whole person" might do that. Perhaps a military academy or a strongly religious school. However, given the way public schools work, I am skeptical.<br /><br />2) There's the same direction of causality problem here. Getting kids to spend extra years in school doesn't magically increase their self-control, reduce teen pregnancy, etc.--any more than forcing people to get married would.<br /><br />Like so many people in the ed business, you have a touching faith in the ability of schools to fix things. But "correlation is not causation." If the people who go in least broken come out least broken and the people who come in most broken come out most broken, that suggests that the schools are not responsible for either the good outcomes or the bad.<br /><br />I'm sorry; that was snotty. But we're talking years of kids' lives and dollars of adults' money. I think faith is an inadequate reason to take either one.<br /><br />(It is certainly true that people with more schooling get better jobs but a large part of that is just employers using education as a filter. Lots of jobs that once required a high school diploma now require a college degree, not because the jobs have gotten any harder but because so many more applicants now have high school diplomas. You have to read a lot fewer applications, and do a lot less interviewing if you say, "college degree required." And since the people who graduate college are the people who started with better self-control, etc., you're still getting the top of the applicant pool.)Roger Sweenyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12734128265493099062noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5458172893016186479.post-5606549581851289572012-02-15T03:04:33.953-05:002012-02-15T03:04:33.953-05:00Roger, two responses:
1.) Yes, raising the educat...Roger, two responses:<br /><br />1.) Yes, raising the education levels of the population will result in people with better self-control, better health, etc. (in part as a direct result of their education and in part because they will find better jobs and lead a less stressful life).<br /><br />2.) Even if this weren't the case, improving self-control and health and decreasing teen pregnancy and stress (and altering a hundred other factors in desirable ways) will result in students who learn more, score higher on tests, and are more likely to attain degrees.<br /><br />So, yes, I think that increasing academic performance and educational attainment will result in future positive lifestyle changes for the population. But even if this isn't the case, changing kids' lifestyles, attributes, etc. in ways that will make them better citizens and job candidates will also result in better academic performance and educational attainment.<br /><br />So, either way, trying to improve our country and the economic prospects of our citizens involves (either directly or indirectly) improving the performance of students in schools.Corey Bunje Bowerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09764159604965707919noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5458172893016186479.post-83773745354310791312012-02-12T20:28:59.797-05:002012-02-12T20:28:59.797-05:00On the other hand, more education is strongly asso...<i>On the other hand, more education is strongly associated with so many positive factors (not just high test scores, but improved self-control, lower teen pregnancy, better health, and a million other things), that it also seems dangerous to risk de-emphasizing education in any way. </i><br /><br />And playing on a high school basketball team is strongly associated with being tall. That doesn't mean the causation runs from being on the team to being tall.<br /><br />People who start off with better self-control, ability to defer gratification, and a million other things are the people who will do better at anything, including school.<br /><br />Take another social state that is associated with a lot of good things: higher income, greater happiness, better health, and so on--marriage. Some conservatives say that this means the government should do a lot to encourage marriage. Most liberals disagree. They think that people who have positive qualities are more likely to attract someone willing to spend their whole life with them. Encouraging--or even forcing--marriage is not going to magically give people those qualities.<br /><br />Is encouraging--or forcing--people to go to school really going to give them greater self-control, better health, etc?Roger Sweenyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12734128265493099062noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5458172893016186479.post-38957342996037451002012-02-12T20:03:14.170-05:002012-02-12T20:03:14.170-05:00I think the "cure for depression" you no...I think the "cure for depression" you note is a very real phenomenon, but I think it's actually less prevalent among academics than others. I generally find (with many exceptions, of course) researchers to be more skeptical than others when it comes to the efficacy of various policies (or, at the very least, the efficacy of policies other than the ones they study).<br /><br />I think you raise an interesting idea about essentially reducing the penalty incurred by those with a lack of education. A prof I know recently raised a similar idea and it's had me thinking. On the one hand, it makes sense to focus on creating opportunities for the less educated since we're never going to have 100% of the population composed of college graduates (in fact, it's unlikely to approach even half in my lifetime). On the other hand, more education is strongly associated with so many positive factors (not just high test scores, but improved self-control, lower teen pregnancy, better health, and a million other things), that it also seems dangerous to risk de-emphasizing education in any way. <br /><br />p.s. Thank you . . . It's no longer interesting to me because I've read it so many times.Corey Bunje Bowerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09764159604965707919noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5458172893016186479.post-67256063487543069982012-02-12T12:40:25.891-05:002012-02-12T12:40:25.891-05:00Helen Ladd is a wonderful person but I fear she ha...Helen Ladd is a wonderful person but I fear she has the same cure for depression that most academics do, "It would be terrible if there was nothing we can do, so there MUST be something we can do, and by 'we can do' I mean government programs administered by graduates of this and similar universities."<br /><br />(The depression in this case is, "I feel so awful. Poor people do poorly in school, and they keep doing poorly in school, and if they don't do better in school, they're screwed." An alternative approach might try to lessen how much one is screwed by lack of academic success. Not surprisingly, this is not the first thing that comes to the academic mind.)<br /><br />P.S. Congrats on getting published. It looks like an interesting article.Roger Sweenyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12734128265493099062noreply@blogger.com