Download or read book Information Incentives and Education Policy written by Derek A. Neal and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2018-06-01 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How do we ensure that waste and inefficiency do not undermine the mission of publicly funded schools? Derek Neal writes that economists must analyze education policy in the same way they analyze other procurement problems. Insights from research on incentives and contracts in the private sector point to new approaches that could induce publicly funded educators to provide excellent education, even though taxpayers and parents cannot monitor what happens in the classroom. Information, Incentives, and Education Policy introduces readers to what economists know—and do not know—about the logjams created by misinformation and disincentives in education. Examining a range of policy agendas, from assessment-based accountability and centralized school assignments to charter schools and voucher systems, Neal demonstrates where these programs have been successful, where they have failed, and why. The details clearly matter: there is no quick-and-easy fix for education policy. By combining elements from various approaches, economists can help policy makers design optimal reforms. Information, Incentives, and Education Policy is organized to show readers how standard tools from economics research on information and incentives speak directly to some of the most crucial issues in education today. In addition to providing an overview of the pluses and minuses of particular programs, each chapter includes a series of exercises that allow students of economics to work through the mathematics for themselves or with an instructor’s assistance. For those who wish to master the models and tools that economists of education should use in their work, there is no better resource available.
Download or read book Incentives to Improve Education written by Robert W. McMeekin and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2003 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Incentives to Improve Education identifies three categories of incentives: rewards, (financial rewards for teachers), competition (educational choice, often in the form of payment for education by voucher) and threats (introduction of external standards and accountability for performance). Using new institutional economics as a basis, Robert McMeekin develops a theoretical framework in which micro-level institutions - the 'rules of the game' - within school organizations influence the effort and the performance of teachers, students and other members of school communities. This model is used to analyze alternative approaches within each category of incentives (for example, merit pay for individual teachers versus merit awards to whole schools) and the reasons why some are more effective than others. The book argues that an incentive's impact on schools depends on how it influences the institutional climate within the school. Contracting in schools and networks of schools are also explored. Drawing on a body of economic thought - rarely applied in education studies - that explains how and why different approaches to providing incentives work, this book will be invaluable to economists, practitioners and others with an interest in educational policy and governance and in improving school performance.
Download or read book Incentives and Test Based Accountability in Education written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2011-10-18 with total page 111 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent years there have been increasing efforts to use accountability systems based on large-scale tests of students as a mechanism for improving student achievement. The federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) is a prominent example of such an effort, but it is only the continuation of a steady trend toward greater test-based accountability in education that has been going on for decades. Over time, such accountability systems included ever-stronger incentives to motivate school administrators, teachers, and students to perform better. Incentives and Test-Based Accountability in Education reviews and synthesizes relevant research from economics, psychology, education, and related fields about how incentives work in educational accountability systems. The book helps identify circumstances in which test-based incentives may have a positive or a negative impact on student learning and offers recommendations for how to improve current test-based accountability policies. The most important directions for further research are also highlighted. For the first time, research and theory on incentives from the fields of economics, psychology, and educational measurement have all been pulled together and synthesized. Incentives and Test-Based Accountability in Education will inform people about the motivation of educators and students and inform policy discussions about NCLB and state accountability systems. Education researchers, K-12 school administrators and teachers, as well as graduate students studying education policy and educational measurement will use this book to learn more about the motivation of educators and students. Education policy makers at all levels of government will rely on this book to inform policy discussions about NCLB and state accountability systems.
Download or read book Education Policy in Developing Countries written by Paul Glewwe and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2013-12-17 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Almost any economist will agree that education plays a key role in determining a country’s economic growth and standard of living, but what we know about education policy in developing countries is remarkably incomplete and scattered over decades and across publications. Education Policy in Developing Countries rights this wrong, taking stock of twenty years of research to assess what we actually know—and what we still need to learn—about effective education policy in the places that need it the most. Surveying many aspects of education—from administrative structures to the availability of health care to parent and student incentives—the contributors synthesize an impressive diversity of data, paying special attention to the gross imbalances in educational achievement that still exist between developed and developing countries. They draw out clear implications for governmental policy at a variety of levels, conscious of economic realities such as budget constraints, and point to crucial areas where future research is needed. Offering a wealth of insights into one of the best investments a nation can make, Education Policy in Developing Countries is an essential contribution to this most urgent field.
Download or read book Improving America s Schools written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 1996-11-15 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reform of American education is largely motivated by concerns about our economic competitiveness and American's standard of living. Yet, few if any of the public school reform agendas incorporate economic principles or research findings. Improving America's Schools explores how education and economic research can help produce, in the words of Harvard's Dale W. Jorgenson, "a unified framework for future education reform." This book presents the perspectives of noted experts, including Eric A. Hanushek, author of Making Schools Work, on creating incentives for improved school and student performance; Under Secretary of Education Marshall S. Smith on the Clinton Administration's reform program; and Rebecca Maynard, University of Pennsylvania, on the education of the disadvantaged. This volume explores these areas: The importance of schooling to labor market success. The prospects for combining school-based management with teacher incentives to gain the best of both approaches. The potential of recent innovations in student achievement testing, including new "value-added" indicators. The economic factors involved in maintaining an adequate stock of effective teachers. The volume also explores why, despite similar standards of living, France, the Netherlands, England, Scotland, and the United States produce different levels of education achievement. Improving America's Schools informs the current debate over school reform with a fresh perspective, examples, and data. This readable volume will be of interest to policymakers, researchers, educators, and education administrators as well as economists and employersâ€"it is also readily accessible to concerned parents and the larger community.
Download or read book Incentives to Pander written by Nathan M. Jensen and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-03-15 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Policies targeting individual companies for economic development incentives, such as tax holidays and abatements, are generally seen as inefficient, economically costly, and distortionary. Despite this evidence, politicians still choose to use these policies to claim credit for attracting investment. Thus, while fiscal incentives are economically inefficient, they pose an effective pandering strategy for politicians. Using original surveys of voters in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom, as well as data on incentive use by politicians in the US, Vietnam and Russia, this book provides compelling evidence for the use of fiscal incentives for political gain and shows how such pandering appears to be associated with growing economic inequality. As national and subnational governments surrender valuable tax revenue to attract businesses in the vain hope of long-term economic growth, they are left with fiscal shortfalls that have been filled through regressive sales taxes, police fines and penalties, and cuts to public education.
Download or read book Incentives written by Donald E. Campbell and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-02-22 with total page 699 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines incentives at work to see how and how well coordination is achieved by motivating individual decision makers.
Download or read book Making Sense of Incentives written by Timothy J. Bartik and published by W.E. Upjohn Institute. This book was released on 2019-10-15 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bartik provides a clear and concise overview of how state and local governments employ economic development incentives in order to lure companies to set up shop—and provide new jobs—in needy local labor markets. He shows that many such incentive offers are wasteful and he provides guidance, based on decades of research, on how to improve these programs.
Download or read book Incentives and Test Based Accountability in Education written by Committee on Incentives and Test-Based Accountability in Public Education and published by . This book was released on 2011-10-18 with total page 130 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent years there have been increasing efforts to use accountability systems based on large-scale tests of students as a mechanism for improving student achievement. The federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) is a prominent example of such an effort, but it is only the continuation of a steady trend toward greater test-based accountability in education that has been going on for decades. Over time, such accountability systems included ever-stronger incentives to motivate school administrators, teachers, and students to perform better. Incentives and Test-Based Accountability in Education reviews and synthesizes relevant research from economics, psychology, education, and related fields about how incentives work in educational accountability systems. The book helps identify circumstances in which test-based incentives may have a positive or a negative impact on student learning and offers recommendations for how to improve current test-based accountability policies. The most important directions for further research are also highlighted. For the first time, research and theory on incentives from the fields of economics, psychology, and educational measurement have all been pulled together and synthesized. Incentives and Test-Based Accountability in Education will inform people about the motivation of educators and students and inform policy discussions about NCLB and state accountability systems. Education researchers, K-12 school administrators and teachers, as well as graduate students studying education policy and educational measurement will use this book to learn more about the motivation of educators and students. Education policy makers at all levels of government will rely on this book to inform policy discussions about NCLB and state accountability systems.
Download or read book The Knowledge Capital of Nations written by Eric A. Hanushek and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2023-08-15 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A rigorous, pathbreaking analysis demonstrating that a country's prosperity is directly related in the long run to the skills of its population. In this book Eric Hanushek and Ludger Woessmann make a simple, central claim, developed with rigorous theoretical and empirical support: knowledge is the key to a country's development. Of course, every country acknowledges the importance of developing human capital, but Hanushek and Woessmann argue that message has become distorted, with politicians and researchers concentrating not on valued skills but on proxies for them. The common focus is on school attainment, although time in school provides a very misleading picture of how skills enter into development. Hanushek and Woessmann contend that the cognitive skills of the population—which they term the “knowledge capital” of a nation—are essential to long-run prosperity. Hanushek and Woessmann subject their hypotheses about the relationship between cognitive skills (as consistently measured by international student assessments) and economic growth to a series of tests, including alternate specifications, different subsets of countries, and econometric analysis of causal interpretations. They find that their main results are remarkably robust, and equally applicable to developing and developed countries. They demonstrate, for example, that the “Latin American growth puzzle” and the “East Asian miracle” can be explained by these regions' knowledge capital. Turning to the policy implications of their argument, they call for an education system that develops effective accountability, promotes choice and competition, and provides direct rewards for good performance.
Download or read book Performance Incentives written by Matthew G. Springer and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2009-12-01 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The concept of pay for performance for public school teachers is growing in popularity and use, and it has resurged to once again occupy a central role in education policy. Performance Incentives: Their Growing Impact on American K-12 Education offers the most up-to-date and complete analysis of this promising—yet still controversial—policy innovation. Performance Incentives brings together an interdisciplinary team of experts, providing an unprecedented discussion and analysis of the pay-for-performance debate by • Identifying the potential strengths and weaknesses of tying pay to student outcomes; • Comparing different strategies for measuring teacher accomplishments; • Addressing key conceptual and implemen - tation issues; • Describing what teachers themselves think of merit pay; • Examining recent examples in Arkansas, Florida, North Carolina, and Texas; • Studying the overall impact on student achievement.
Download or read book Making Schools Work written by Eric A. Hanushek and published by Brookings Institution Press. This book was released on 2010-12-01 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Educational reform is a big business in the United States. Parents, educators, and policymakers generally agree that something must be done to improve schools, but the consensus ends there. The myriad of reform documents and policy discussions that have appeared over the past decade have not helped to pinpoint exactly what should be done. The case for investment in education is an economic one: schooling improves the productivity and earnings of individuals and promotes stronger economic growth and better functioning of society. Recent trends in schooling have, however, lessened the value of society's investments as costs have risen dramatically while student performance has stayed flat or even fallen. The task is to improve performance while controlling costs. This book is the culmination of extensive discussions among a panel of economists led by Eric Hanushek. They conclude that economic considerations have been entirely absent from the development of educational policies and that economic reality is sorely needed in discussions of new policies. The book outlines an improvement plan that emphasizes changing incentives in schools and gathering information about effective approaches. Available research and analysis demonstrates that current central decisionmaking has worked poorly. Concentrating on inputs such as pupil-teacher ratios or teacher graduate degrees appears quite inferior to systems that directly reward performance. Nonetheless, since experience with such alternatives is very limited, a program of extensive evaluation appears to be in order. Attempts to institute radical change on the basis of currently available information involve substantial risks of failure. Many people today find proposals such as charter schools, expanded use of merit pay, or educational vouchers to be appealing. Yet there is little evidence of their effectiveness, and widespread adoption of these proposals is sure to run into substantial problems of im
Download or read book New Directions in Education Policy Implementation written by Meredith I. Honig and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2006-07-13 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Provides the most up-to-date and comprehensive review of contemporary research in education policy implementation. A companion to Allan R. Odden’s Education Policy Implementation, also published by SUNY Press, this book presents original work by a new generation of scholars contributing to education policy implementation research. The contributors define education policy implementation as the product of the interaction among particular policies, people, and places. Their analyses of previous generations of implementation research reveal that contemporary findings not only build directly on lessons learned from the past, but also seek to deepen past findings. These contemporary researchers also break from the past by seeking a more nuanced, contingent, and rigorous theory-based explication of how implementation unfolds. They argue that researchers and practitioners can help improve education policy implementation by not asking simply what works, but rather focusing their attention on what works, for whom, where, when, and why. Meredith I. Honig is Assistant Professor of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at the University of Washington at Seattle.
Download or read book Rewards and Reform written by Jennifer A. O'Day and published by Jossey-Bass. This book was released on 1996-05-06 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rewards and Reform offers a comprehensive view of student, teacher, managerial, and organizational incentives and shows how they are linked to school reform goals. Noted experts in education policy, practice, and research, as well as respected thinkers and practitioners from the public and private sectors, consider a variety of incentive approaches.Drawing from such diverse sources as studies of performance incentives, reforms in Vermont, school structuring in New York City, private sector research on management, and current theories of motivation and organizational development, the book explains the underlying issues surrounding incentives and reform and provides a framework for future research and policy. The book shows, for example, how workplace redesigns could answer teachers' needs for autonomy and participation--and so bolster the professional nature of teaching. It also examines alternative ways of thinking about teacher compensation.
Download or read book The State of Education Policy Research written by Susan H. Fuhrman and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-11-25 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The State of Education Policy Research is a comprehensive, insightful evaluation of the strengths and weaknesses of education policy research in the U.S. today. Editors Susan Fuhrman, David Cohen, and Fritz Mosher examine key issues facing policymakers and researchers including race, education equity, teacher quality, early education, privatization, and the politics of education policy. Collectively, the chapters present a complex mosaic of education policy research that integrates the views of policy experts from education, economics, and related disciplines. Important topics discussed in this influential new text include: Politics of education—Covers research on key political groups including teachers’ unions, business roundtables, parent and/or religious advocates, as well as state and federal lawmakers. Race—Discusses race as an issue as well as a non-issue and includes a discussion of the testing gap. State policies— Provides an overview of state policies directed at improving teacher quality and discusses the reality of a teacher shortage. National Trends—Analyzes current trends toward centralization and standardization and the growing influence of federal and state mandates. This book is appropriate for advanced courses in education administration, politics, and policy. It will also appeal to policy researchers in education, economics, and political science, to policy makers at the federal, state, and local levels and to the academic libraries serving them.
Download or read book Preparing Teachers written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2010-07-25 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Teachers make a difference. The success of any plan for improving educational outcomes depends on the teachers who carry it out and thus on the abilities of those attracted to the field and their preparation. Yet there are many questions about how teachers are being prepared and how they ought to be prepared. Yet, teacher preparation is often treated as an afterthought in discussions of improving the public education system. Preparing Teachers addresses the issue of teacher preparation with specific attention to reading, mathematics, and science. The book evaluates the characteristics of the candidates who enter teacher preparation programs, the sorts of instruction and experiences teacher candidates receive in preparation programs, and the extent that the required instruction and experiences are consistent with converging scientific evidence. Preparing Teachers also identifies a need for a data collection model to provide valid and reliable information about the content knowledge, pedagogical competence, and effectiveness of graduates from the various kinds of teacher preparation programs. Federal and state policy makers need reliable, outcomes-based information to make sound decisions, and teacher educators need to know how best to contribute to the development of effective teachers. Clearer understanding of the content and character of effective teacher preparation is critical to improving it and to ensuring that the same critiques and questions are not being repeated 10 years from now.
Download or read book Crucial Needs Weak Incentives written by Robert R. Kaufman and published by Johns Hopkins University Press. This book was released on 2004-11-16 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Selected by Choice Magazine as an Outstanding Academic Title Crucial Needs, Weak Incentives studies the politics of efforts to reform education and health services in Latin America in the 1990s. Both sectors were common targets of reform—education because of its economic importance, health care because of needs to reduce great inequities of access and opportunities to increase domestic savings presented by reforms. Both sectors also have large numbers of unionized public employees, whose presence affects patronage as well as political power. The book presents case studies that offer a wealth of new information not previously accessible to the English-speaking academic and policy community. For health care, these cover Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, Brazil, Costa Rica, and Peru; for eductaion, Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, Brazil, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. Four chapters by the editors set out for each sector the goals, structure, and outcomes of reform efforts. Contributors are Marta Arretche, Josefina Bruni Celli, Mary A. Clark, Javier Corrales, Sonia M. Draibe, Christina Ewig, Alec Ian Gershberg, Alejandra Gonzalez Rossetti, Merilee S. Grindle, Peter Lloyd-Sherlock, Pamela S. Lowden, and Patricia Ramirez.
