Education policy - follow up

I wanted to continue some of the questions raised by Nels in his earlier posts here and here.  I think one of the biggest challenges to come to grips with in education reform is in figuring out what our goals are ... do we want to guarantee a certain baseline of knowledge or do we want to push the frontier as possible.  Probably both, but how do we weigh each of those goals?  This is a fundamental question in everything from early education tracking to availability of vocational schools to relative funding of public higher ed and community colleges vs. elementary and secondary school. 

Expanding the discussion on religious freedom and opposition to the ACA

I noted in my presentation about the Affordable Care Act (ACA) that the requirement that insurance plans provide contraception at no extra cost was fiercely opposed by the Catholic Church and others on the grounds of religious freedom.  As a result, the Obama administration exempted “religious employers” from the requirement, but there are still several court challenges in the works.  Dr. Sweat and I noted in our comments that this opposition is interesting given that large percentages of religious women and Catholic women use contraception.  A summary of this data and a link to more detail can be found here: http://www.guttmacher.org/media/nr/2011/04/13/index.html.

I also noted that I find it productive to see the opposition to this aspect of the ACA as going beyond a concern with religious freedom.  Providing contraception is opposed by many on the right and opposition to it is connected to other policy proposals and views: pro-life views, support for more restrictions on abortion, opposition to comprehensive sex education, proposed fetal personhood legislation, and the vote to defund Planned Parenthood. 

A Story of Education, Part II

As you can imagine, the rant on Part I is really what you can almost feel as an on-the-ground consequences for teachers.  And it is certainly not sustainable.  That quote is from a high quality teacher.  She is not perfect.  However, she does not need to be perfect, because it would be ridiculous to suggest that all (or, in fact, any) teachers could be. They especially cannot be perfect if you evaluate them by narrow outcomes that must be achieved not by them but by the (sometimes) dozens of students they teach at a time, students who each feel different constraints on their lives. These constraints are made even more illogical and insurmountable when considering the lack of resources flowing to education.

So, my question for those who are knowledgeable about such constraints- what are they?  Let's see if we can map a realistic theoretical and empirical picture of what needs to be taken into consideration for meaningful public education policy.  

Secondly, how might we get there?  Let's see if we can map that out too.  

I dont mean to be too formulaic in this, as that might be part of our problem (too much positivism!).  But I think it would be good to get the best general knowledge we have out there so this blog can offer a nice primer for those interested in applying social science to education.

A Story of Education, Part I

Virginia has decided that teachers were overpaid for not producing adequate results.  Well, not all of Virginia.  Just a few in power.

The ideology is simple, actually.  No Child Left Behind just needs some tweaks (i.e. expect more from (I'm paraphrasing) lazy, incompetent teachers) to make the 2014 target work.

Right.

The basic ideology is that standardizing expectations, particularly in Math and English, across the country will even the playing field because everyone, no matter their background, will be expected to perform at the same basic level or better.

Funny thing is, now states are realizing that they will not be making their 2014 target.  So they have two solutions: increase demands on teachers, or decrease the expectations.

Who are the 47 percent?

I'm sure by now you are aware of Gov. Romney's offensive comments about how "it's not my job" to worry about the 47 percent of Americans who pay no federal income tax.  That comment was caught on film last May and released by the respected magazine  Mother Jones on Monday.  On Friday Gov. Romeny finally released his 2011 tax returns, and we learned that he only paid 14 percent tax on a roughly $20 million income, far less than middle class families.  In fact, since most of the Governor's income came from investments, Romney paid less in federal taxes than low-income workers, who with their employers pay 15 percent of wages in payroll taxes for Social Security and Medicare.   Romney continues to refuse to release tax returns prior to 2010.  Instead, he paid an accountant to issue a written statement that Romney actually did pay taxes in those years.

Vanishing history and Quantitative Research

Interesting story making the rounds on the interwebs today that has particular relevance for our social science students thinking about research projects ...

Constitution Day follow-up: Job Lock and Health Care

Yesterday the Social Science Department held our annual Constitution Day speaker series event, this year on the topic of health care and the Affordable Care Act or "Obamacare."  I talked a little bit about the unique aspects of health care as economic market and some of the specific challenges we face in figuring out an efficient and equitable market structure for it.  Health care is fundamentally different from shoes or hamburgers, and as a result some of the traditional economic predictions about competition, pricing, and allocation can't simply be applied in a cookie cutter fashion to all markets the way the first few chapters of an intro econ textbook might lead you to believe.

A couple of things that I had to cut for time (I think I still used about double the time I had been allocated - sorry to all of you in the audience) and so I want to expand on them a bit here:

Should charities be run like corporations?

I stumbled across this article over the weekend that has some relevance to some of our recent posts on charity and altruism.  The question is: should charities be run like corporations - high executive salaries, lots of advertising to build market power, maybe even publicly traded stocks?  A summary of key points provided by the fine students at Centives.net:

Space Tourism

 

I recently read an interesting article in the NY Times about the growth of the "Space Tourism" market and the increasing competition among firms to capture customers.  This caught my attention for two reasons: (1) We reside on a campus with a strong tourism program and I couldn't help but idly wonder if this will be a course offered here someday and (2) my wife is obsessed with the idea of space tourism.

Strategic pricing and the app store

In honor of today's anticipated new iPhone announcement, I've been thinking about app pricing in the iTunes store and some of the interesting network effects and strategic behavior I've been observing lateley.

Streams of income

My wife and I took our honeymoon in the Rocky Mountains a few years ago (hopefully she's not reading this and won't realize I have no idea how many years it was?!?) and last Christmas my mother in law donated some money to help protect the parklands there as a very thoughtful gift to us.  As a result, we've been getting the quarterly Nature Conservancy magazine this year, and one came in the mail yesterday with something I found pretty interesting.

Following up on my recent post about life insurance, this latest issue had the following statement in bold on the wrap-around cover:

"Protect rivers and create streams of income: Support the natural world you love while also providing yourself with income and significant tax savings!"

Euro Crisis

I read an interesting article in the NY Times over the weekend about how U.S. companies are planning for various contingencies of Greece exiting the EU or even the Eurozone collapsing.  International financial issues aren't exactly my area of economic expertise, but the practical questions of how day-to-day contracts are handled in the event of a re-organization I found pretty interesting.  These include such plans as those of Bank of America considering having "dump trucks full of cash ready to drive over the border into Greece to continue to pay local employees and suppliers in the event money is unavailable."  (Anyone else sense the making of a new Die Hard movie plot?  Bruce Willis - call me!)

As a thought experiment, imagine you are a business in Hudson, WI on the border between WI and MN: