Endowments of Top 25 Liberal Arts Colleges

The release of the latest endowment data piqued my curiosity.  One can look at them a million ways, but I'm particularly interested in liberal arts colleges and decided to compare the endowment figures to US News & World Report rankings.

As you can see in the table below, the higher-ranked schools generally have both larger endowments and more endowment money per student (correlation of -.53 between endowment and USNWR rank and -.58 between endowment/student and UWNWR rank), which is, of course, not a surprise (both because they money allows schools to afford items that increase prestige and because the endowment itself is used by UWNWR as one component of their rankings).

Before I get into the discussion, let me display the data.  In the six columns are the USWNR ranking, the school name, the endowment size (in thousands), the school's enrollment (as reported by USNWR), the endowment per student, a ratio of 5% of the endowment per student (which is roughly how much a school has to spend per student solely from tapping into the endowment), and the rank (within this sample) of the endowment per student.

USNWR	School	Endowment	Enroll	End/Stu	5%/stu	Rank
1	Williams	$1,784,305	2,083	$856,603	$42,830	5
2	Amherst	$1,641,511	1,795	$914,491	$45,725	3
3	Swarthmore	$1,508,483	1,524	$989,818	$49,491	2
4	Pomona	$1,700,454	1,560	$1,090,035	$54,502	1
5	Middlebury	$907,668	2,532	$358,479	$17,924	12
6	Bowdoin	$904,215	1,762	$513,175	$25,659	8
6	Carleton	$653,465	2,020	$323,498	$16,175	17
6	Wellesley	$1,499,872	2,411	$622,095	$31,105	6
9	Claremont McKenna	$543,236	1,278	$425,067	$21,253	10
10	Haverford	$402,730	1,177	$342,167	$17,108	14
11	Davidson	$509,583	1,742	$292,528	$14,626	20
12	Washington & Lee	$1,218,132	2,173	$560,576	$28,029	7
12	Wesleyan	$589,811	3,215	$183,456	$9,173	23
14	Vassar	$814,130	2,446	$332,841	$16,642	16
17	Hamilton	$657,529	1,861	$353,320	$17,666	13
18	Harvey Mudd	$243,125	773	$314,521	$15,726	19
19	Grinnell	$1,500,219	1,655	$906,477	$45,324	4
19	Smith	$1,429,527	3,113	$459,212	$22,961	9
21	Bates	$231,451	1,725	$134,174	$6,709	24
21	Colby	$611,441	1,825	$335,036	$16,752	15
21	Colgate	$693,436	2,903	$238,869	$11,943	21
24	Oberlin	$699,895	2,974	$235,338	$11,767	22
25	Bryn Mawr	$671,103	1,755	$382,395	$19,120	11
25	Macalester	$654,465	2,033	$321,921	$16,096	18

I should first note that I dropped the US Naval and Military Academies (which tied for 14th) from the sample -- no endowment data was available, and I'm not convinced they belong in this group anyway.

In no particular order, here are the things that stand out to me:

1.) As I said above, the wealthiest tend to be ranked the highest.  No surprise.  Five institutions in particular far out-distance the rest in terms of resources per student, four of which are ranked 1-4.

2.) Given that all of these schools are in the same general arena in terms of prestige, there's quite a bit of variability in terms of financial resources -- two schools have less than $10K per student to spend while five have over $40K.

3.) Notable underachievers (high resources, low ranking) include Grinnell, Smith, Washington & Lee, and (arguably) Wellesley.  Two of these are single-sex institutions, which may limit applications (raising acceptance rate) and/or increase alumni giving relative to other factors.  Washington & Lee is one of only two schools located in the South and has a reputation as being more conservative than the other schools.  I'm not sure how to explain Grinnell other than possibly the Iowa location.  As I mentioned above, exactly five schools have more than $40K to spend per student (the same five that have endowments exceeding $1.5 billion), and four of those rank 1-4.  Grinnell ranks 19th.

4.) Notable overachievers include Carleton, Davidson, Wesleyan, and Bates.  I'm not sure I have a great explanation for these other than the possibility that their reputation is larger than their endowment (an argument I don't find super compelling).  More on this below.

5.) An interesting factoid: Macalester's endowment is exactly $1 million more than Carleton's.  Macalester is 45 miles north of Carleton, enrolls 13 more students, and is 19 spots behind in the rankings.


Were I to do more than muse about summary statistics, I'd wonder why some schools earn much higher ratings relative to their financial resources than others.  To the extent that a given school's goal is to enroll the best students and earn the highest ranking, some are drastically more successful/efficient than others.

Of course, I'd expect that a large part of the explanation is that some of these schools place far more emphasis on the factors USNWR measures and/or the USNWR rankings themselves.  I'd also imagine that, among other things, allocation of these resources, admissions practices, location, reputation, campus offerings, and -- in various ways -- performance of campus leaders, faculty, and staff influence the success/efficiency of a school (as measured by USWNR relative to endowment resources).

Lastly, I'd wonder if the endowment, say, 20 years ago might be more strongly correlated with the ranking than the current endowment.  Or at least if some the low endowment/high rank schools had higher endowments relative to their peers 20 years ago and some of the high endowment/low rank schools had lower endowments relative to their peers 20 years ago.  This certainly would've influenced the faculty they hired 20 years ago, the perception of the college by students' parents, and probably the perception of the school by people in academia, at foundations, working as college counselors, etc.  In other words, schools that have dramatically expanded recently may be thought of as more resource-rich than they currently are and schools that have seen recent dramatic growth in endowment may be thought of as more resource-poor than they current are.

I'm no expert on higher ed or philanthropy, so I can really only guess about these numbers.  All I know is that I find them interesting and that there are probably some good explanations for the patterns we see.  If anybody knows more about these topics than I, I'd love to hear your explanations.

Update: I neglected to note that along with allocation of resources, I'm sure the allocation of the endowment matters as well -- if  large chunk of the endowment is restricted to, say, maintaining the hockey rink or seminary that it will affect the school differently than if a large chunk is restricted to, say, financial aid or even unrestricted uses.

I also neglected to mention that not only do some schools emphasize the ratings and try to game the system, but some might even just flat out lie.

More on The Wrong Question About Teacher Pay

In my last post I suggested that the NY Times was asking the wrong question about teacher pay.  They start the discussion by asserting that teachers make more than other professionals with similar SAT and GRE scores and ask if that means if teachers are overpaid or that teaching needs to pay more to attract higher achieving applicants.

To me, it raises a different question: why people would work in another field if they can make more by teaching? I can think of two broad sets of possibilities.

1.) As an anonymous commenter mentioned on the last post, it's possible that people underestimate how much teachers make and simply don't realize they could make more by teaching.  If this is the case, then we should spend our time shouting from the rooftops about how much teachers actually get paid.

2.) Or, people would rather do something else than teach despite the fact they earn less money.  This could be true for any number of reasons (working conditions, barriers to entry, advancement possibilities, salary structure, etc.).  If this is the problem, we should our time figuring out how to make teaching a more attractive field for both prospective and current teachers.

In either case, the two solutions offered by the Times don't make much sense.  Arguing that teachers are overpaid at the same time that we've reached a consensus that we need more high-quality teachers seems counterproductive; if we're currently short on great teachers, I doubt that reducing pay will do much to help.  And if people are already willing to sacrifice higher salaries in order to enter a field other than teaching, I'm not sure why we think throwing more money at them would solve the problem.

Given the absurdly high turnover rates in our most troubled schools, and the research on why such turnover occurs, it seems likely that working conditions in some schools might be a large part of this problem.

In previous research, I found that 40% of teachers at high-poverty NYC middle schools are in their first or second year in the school and that fewer than half of all teachers have 5 or more years of teaching experience.  The starting salary for somebody fresh out of college in NYC is now over $45K, which won't make anybody a millionaire but is more than a lot of recent college grads earn.

Would NYC have better teachers who stuck around longer if they paid starting teachers $50K or $70K or $100K?  That's certainly a possibility, but besides potentially costing billions of dollars each year, it's also possible that there wouldn't be a huge difference . . . if teachers are leaving to take lower paying jobs elsewhere, then it seems dangerous to assume that paying them more will keep them in place.

Apologies for arguing by anecdote, but in my own case I've sacrificed somewhere near a quarter million dollars of pay to attend grad school for six years (compared to teaching in NYC) . . . and there's a really good chance that I would've made more next year as a 9th year teacher in NYC than I will as a newly minted PhD.  And not for a second does that make me regret leaving teaching.  Well, ok, maybe for one second . . . but that's about it.

Anyway, my general point is that we have plenty of evidence that things other than money are driving the current trends we see in the teacher labor market -- low numbers of high-achieving people entering the field and very high numbers of teachers leaving the field (though this attrition is concentrated mostly in high-poverty schools) -- so we should look at levers other than money when creating policy designed to attract and retain the best and brightest teachers.  The fact that people are passing up money to do things other than teach only serves to bolster this point.

The Wrong Question About Teacher Pay

The NY Times posted an online debate today that asked whether teachers are overpaid.  The following is their prompt, verbatim.

In the private sector, people with SAT and GRE scores comparable to those of education majors earn less than teachers do. Does that mean teachers are overpaid? Or that public schools should pay more to attract top applicants who tend to go into higher-paying professions?

I'd argue that this is the wrong question.  If current teachers earn more than similarly achieving (as measured by the SAT and GRE) private sector employees, that means they must earn the same as private sector employees who are higher achieving.

Given the recent focus on teacher quality, shouldn't the question then be why these higher-achieving graduates choose to do something other than teach despite earning no more than current teachers earn?

Moving on from the "Search for Universals"

As I've delved deeper into the field of education research, I've grown increasingly frustrated by two large problems I see in that research.  While listening to Malcom Gladwell's TED talk on consumer choice, something he said helped crystallize the second issue (I'll explore the first in another post).

In the talk, Gladwell discusses the shift of food science (starting with Prego pasta sauce) from trying to create the "one best" product for all to creating multiple products that fit specific groups.  He compares that trend to cancer research, arguing that "the great revolution in science of the last 10-15 years" is "the movement from the search for universals to the understanding of variability".

If he's right, then it seems ed policy researchers missed a memo somewhere (to be fair, it's not just ed policy -- I see the same problem in lots of policy literature).

The vast majority of the policy research I've read, seen presented, or heard discussed focuses exclusively, or at least mainly, on the average effect of a particular variable, intervention, or policy.  Over the years, we've developed increasingly sophisticated methods to more accurately estimate these average effects.  But I rarely hear people discuss the differential effects of the variable, intervention, or policy of interest.

In other words, we keep trying to figure out if different policies "work," but we define "work," as making a statistically significant difference for the average student, teacher, principal, school, district, or state.  If we instead asked for whom a given policy works, we'd likely find that it works very well for some while harming others.

In the talk, Gladwell mentions a food scientist hired to create the "one best Pepsi" who conducts taste tests of the product with varying amounts of sugar.  To his surprise, no one, clear winner emerges.  Some people prefer only a little sugar, some like a medium amount, and some like a lot.  He then has an epiphany and realizes that there's no such thing as the "one best Pepsi" (which eventually leads to the creation of a wide variety of Prego sauces that target different audiences).

I'd argue that education policy is almost exactly the same.  For example, imagine a new math curriculum.  How do we decide if it works?  The gold standard of research would dictate that we randomly assign, say, 100 classrooms to use the new curriculum and 100 to use the old one.  We'd then compare the average scores at the beginning and end of the year of the treatment and control groups.  If kids in the treatment group score significantly higher, on average, than the control group then that curriculum earns a gold star.

We spend increasing amounts of time trying to figure out which math curricula will yield the largest achievement gains across the students who use them.  But it seems exceedingly unlikely that "one best math curriculum" truly exists.  Some states, districts, schools, teachers, and/or students will do best with curriculum A, some with curriculum B, and some with curriculum C.

Wouldn't our time be better spent figuring out for which students curriculum A would be best and for which students curriculum B would be best (and why)?  And we could say the same about all of the largest issues in education policy -- teacher training, teacher pay, charter schools, and so on.  In later posts, I'll explore how our research and policy would differ if we aimed to understand and account for variability rather than simply finding the one best policy.

I've long thought it odd that we spend most of our lives being told not to stereotype and make generalizations while the most educated people in the country strive to make the largest generalization possible in their research.  Most (though not all) researchers focus incessantly on "generalizability" (one of those words we use in the field but the spellchecker won't recognize): if we can generalize your findings to 10 million students across the country, you're likely to publish the paper in a better journal than if we can only generalize your results to students in one school.

As it turns out, I was right to think that odd.  Greater generalizability matters in many ways.  But, at some point, we start missing the point -- and for exactly the same reasons teachers and parents across the country are telling our kids not to generalize.  Everybody is different.

Every student is different.  Every teacher is different.  Every principal is different.  Every school is different.  Every district is different.  Every state is different.  The best policy, on average, will help one and hurt another.  Until we understand this variability, we're doomed to fail.

Reaction to the CMO Study

I don't disagree with the larger point behind Andrew Rotherham's argument regarding the recent study on Charter Management Organizations (CMOs) that we need to "live with some lemons" in order to see other schools succeed (and subsequently learn from those success stories).  I certainly wouldn't want my kid to attend one of the lemon schools (the educational equivalent of NIMBYism), but the larger argument that we sometimes have to take a step backward to take two steps forward is reasonable.

I, do, however disagree with two things he writes in the column:

1.) He writes that the study disproves charter critics' argument that "the good ones can’t be replicated to serve enough kids to really make a difference" by making it "clear that it is indeed possible to build a lot of schools that are game-changers for a lot of students".  He mentions that KIPP has 100 or so schools now and continues to perform well.  That's good.  That's a lot of schools.  What KIPP has done is really impressive.

But when charter critics say that high-flying charters can't be scaled up, they don't mean that we can't create 100 good charters.  They mean that we can't create 10,000 good schools run exactly the way KIPP and other schools are currently run.  In particular, KIPP and other top-performing schools tend to rely heavily on 20-something TFA members and TFA alums who are high-achieving, idealistic, often single, and willing to work long hours for relatively little pay for a few years.  There's nothing wrong with doing that.  If I opened a charter school tomorrow, I'd probably do the same thing.  But it is something that can't be replicated in every high-poverty school across the country.  The fact that KIPP has opened 100 schools absolutely does not change the fact that there aren't enough teachers who fit this mold to run all schools like this.

That's not to say that we can't copy many other innovations and features of the KIPPs of the world, just that building 100 schools run one way doesn't mean we can run every other school in the country (or even just all the high-poverty schools) the exact same way.  The "enough to make a difference" description of the argument is arguably a straw man since even one school "makes a difference" -- Rotherham should instead focus on implications for systemic reform rather than beating up straw men.

2.) I also find it really odd that the study itself and some of the articles on the study seem to emphasize that the differences in achievement gains between CMO-run charters and traditional public schools were not statistically significant, while Rotherham writes that "The study found that, in general, students at charter-network schools outperform similar students at traditional public schools, although sometimes not by very much" (and he's not the only one who said something like this).

I understand that the way these results are interpreted are different in academia and policy.  Of the eight point estimates they calculate, one is borderline significantly positive, three others seem like they could maybe be positive (point estimate larger than the standard error), three are trivial, through technically positive, and one is trivially negative.  So, I guess that's kinda (sorta) positive.  On the other hand, of the 22 CMOs they examine, 11 have positive coefficients in both math and reading, 2 are neutral in both, and 9 are negative in both.

In academia, that means that there were no significant differences -- I can't imagine trying to construe that as a positive world.  In the policy world, it could mean that "there are likely to be very small, positive differences," but to say they "outperform" other schools "in general" seems rather strong to me -- especially since he added "sometimes not by very much".  There were no areas in which the average CMO school outperformed the average non-charter by a lot, so that seems like an odd thing to say.


Of course, I hesitate to even point out these two things (they just struck me as odd while I was reading his column) because they threaten to distract from what I think should be the main discussion surrounding this study and other research on charters.  The argument about whether or not charters are better or not is, quite frankly, silly.  Some are.  Some aren't.  The end.  I want to know why some are better and what we can learn from those that are better.  And, similarly, why some are worse and what we can learn from them.  As long as we regard "charter" as a word that magically makes a school either evil or, well, magical, we won't really be learning all we can to help educate our students.

Do Teacher Quality Initiatives Impact the Wrong Teachers?

Let me illustrate my point by first telling three anecdotes.

1.) Believe it or not, back in elementary school I was just about the model student.  I was quiet and respectful in class, did all my homework on time, scored high on tests, wrote good reports, and won numerous awards.  When teachers fretted about the performance of their students, I don't think my name came up too often.

Which is why my first day of fourth grade sticks out.  I'd been assigned to a teacher new to our school, and I didn't know what to expect.  I hoped she'd be nice and was a little worried when she took the opportunity to sternly lay down the law and do her best to discourage any disobedience.  As my Mom tells it, I came home in tears that day, sobbing "She's sooo strict!"

2.) A couple weeks ago, I was the teacher fretting about my class.  As I prepared interim grade reports, it was even more evident to me that a number of students weren't putting forth the effort I was hoping they would (and had become accustomed to seeing from students in my class).  As I puzzled over this, part of me wanted to read my class the riot act.  I settled for hoping that the sub-par grade reports and a few words of motivation would kick them into gear.

A day later, I got a tentative knock on my office door.  A student was worried about the report.  I looked at the student's grades for the semester and quickly ascertained that there was no need for concern here.  We spoke for a while and I assured the student that earning the highest quiz grades in the class indicated a strong likelihood that the end-of-term grade would be pretty high if present efforts were maintained.

3.) A good friend of mine is a model teacher.  You know that teacher that arrives at school before dawn, gives up lunches, nights, weekends, and breaks to tutor students, chaperon dances, re-make that lesson plan for the 20th time, and do whatever else is necessary (and, usually, unnecessary)?  That's my friend.  Were I the principal, I'd promptly resign and insist my friend take the job.

A couple years back, the school district where my friend teaches implemented a new teacher evaluation program involving lots of new checklists and observations and other bells and whistles.  Ever since, my friend has been an absolute wreck.  Every conversation inevitably, and repeatedly, turns to the strong likelihood that my friend will no longer be employed in the near future.  I assure my friend that the new system is designed to ensure the district keeps the model teachers and that the worrying is unnecessary, but to no avail.  I don't know if the constant anxiety has negatively impacted my friend's teaching or not, but it's certainly impacting quality of life.


so, what do these three have in common?


In the first, the teacher (rightfully) wanted to scare the worst students straight and push the mediocre ones to do better.  But it was the best student (I'd like to think) who was mortified, not the worst ones.  Many years later, I found out my Mom had relayed my reaction to the teacher, who had sighed, shaken her head, and said something like "it's always the wrong ones who get scared."

In the second, I (rightfully, I sure hope) wanted to scare the worst students straight and push the mediocre ones to do better.  But the only reaction I got was from possibly the best student in the class -- the one who doesn't need to spend any time fretting about what the end of term report card will say.

In the third, the district (rightfully, I think) wanted to scare the worst teachers straight (and/or just fire them) and push the mediocre ones to do better.  I can't say how the other teachers responded, but the model teacher I know is the one who's been scared, despite being straight as an arrow to begin with.

what does this mean?

Is it possible that our attempts to scare teachers straight are only scaring the ones who were already doing things the right way?  After all, the ones who care the most about their performance are the ones who are most likely to take the new initiatives to heart.

Whether one threatens to fire teachers, rolls out a new evaluation system, publishes value-added scores, implements a new incentive pay system, or whatever else, I wonder who will be most responsive?  It seems likely that it's those who were already the most responsible.


so what?

If we can expect those who care the most to react the strongest to accountability and evaluation initiatives, then we need to change the way we frame and present these initiatives.  We can't just assume that a few threats will scare the stiffs straight when the stiffs aren't even paying attention.  And we don't certainly don't want to scare off the best and the brightest.

I'd argue, we need to take a more nuanced and targeted approach when pursuing these types of efforts.  Let's first make sure that those who are doing the right thing are recognized and thanked for their efforts.  Those who aren't recognized and thanked, and don't seem interested in being recognized and thanked, may be the ones we need to threaten, encourage, or hold accountable.

I recently had a conversation with a friend who manages organizational change in another field.  I relayed the story of my friend the model teacher and the subsequent anxiety.  My non-teacher friend quickly dismissed the anecdote, noting that all organizational change elicits fear and anxiety among employees.  It seems to me that teachers might be more anxious than others, but I'm inclined to agree with that point: all organizational change probably does elicit fear and anxiety among employees.  But is it the right employees who are scared and anxious?

When Outsiders are Needed

I've written about the push to include more outsiders in education (here and here, for example), and often focused more on the negatives than the positives of doing so.  So, today, let me take a brief moment to highlight one of the negatives of not allowing outside perspectives into education.

As regular readers know, I used to teach at a middle school in the Bronx that was shut down a few years back.  While shuttering the school (and subsequently opening three new, smaller, schools inside the building) was certainly no panacea, it's hard for me to believe it could possibly have made the situation any worse.

Not everything at my school was a disaster (the most notable exception to me was that a good portion of the teachers were at least very devoted if not also very skilled), but the list of negatives far exceeds the list of positives.  "Dysfunctional" would be a fair (maybe even kind) assessment of the day-to-day operations of the school.

That's the background for this snippet of conversation between two veteran teachers from a few weeks ago:

Teacher 1: "The more i visit schools, the more I see we were doing this right. [Our school] should have never closed."
Teacher 2: "You are so right [Teacher 1]. I still get angry about it...like it was our fault!"

I'm not a psychologist, but it seems pretty clear to me that the two teachers are (still) unable to dispassionately evaluate our school.  This would align with the split in reactions to the announcement the school would close that I witnessed: the newer teachers in the building (myself included) mostly seemed to say things like "good riddance . . . I'll find a better position somewhere else," while the vets struggled with the decision and where to go next (and were suddenly filled with nostalgia for a school they'd ostensibly detested the week prior).  They obviously had a much deeper connection to the school than did us newbies, but they also seemed to interpret evaluations of the school as implicit evaluations of their own personal performance.

I'm sure there are a million good reasons for them to feel this way, but the policy-relevant point is that those feelings prevented them from seeing all sides of the situation.  If any attack on the school becomes a personal attack against them, it seems unlikely that they'd ever be able to embrace radical change in a school that clearly (to me, anyway) needed just that.

So, in this case, I'd argue that outsiders were needed to do that.  I left before the new schools were up and running, so I have no idea if the outsiders' solution really helped, but I think the recognition that the school wasn't working was a valuable contribution regardless.

In short: while outsiders frequently intrude where they're not needed, this was an instance where they were.

I'm back

Not that I ever officially left, but between dissertation, teaching, revising manuscripts, job hunting, etc. blogging kept falling to the bottom of my to-do list.  I don't expect that to-do list to grow much shorter in the next six months, but I've also noticed how much more engaged I am in ed. policy issues outside of my research-focus when I'm blogging regularly.  So I'm going to blog regularly.  Not every day.  And usually shorter pieces than I've written in the past.  But I'm back.

Why No Outrage over Principal Quality?

As teachers around the country start to head back to work, I'm starting to hear the same thing I hear every year from teachers I know: "my new principal is horrible".  But it seems like I never read anything in the news about principal quality: instead, everything seems to focus on teacher quality.  Bad teachers are absolutely a problem, but is it possible that bad principals are actually the larger problem?

Here in metro Nashville, a quarter of principals are new this year.  I'm not an expert on school leadership, but it's hard for me to imagine that most principals, like teachers, do more than tread water their first year.  While the new principals learn the ropes, the school climate hangs in the balance: too many moves in the wrong direction may result in teachers, staff, parents, and students becoming disillusioned by, or just flat out leaving, the school.

The research says that teacher quality explains a greater percentage of variance in student achievement on a yearly basis than does principal quality, which makes sense given the direct relationship one has with their teacher versus the mostly indirect relationship one has with their principal.  But in the longer-term, might a bad principal have a larger negative effect on a student than a bad teacher?  After all, a bad teacher can ruin a classroom, but a bad principal can ruin a school.