Educational Economics.

Having majored in Economics and being a teacher now, I am interested in this article about Education and Economics from the City Journal, a conservative New York urban issues magazine. The approach of the economists to education in the article is however quantitative. That is, they are using econometrics to study the effectiveness of teachers. I am suspicious of Econometrics and mathematical modelling in general. I believe that the overuse of mathematical models has contributed to the banking crisis, and the global warming hoax.

However, I do agree with this statement in the article:

....we can say with confidence that a teacher’s ability to produce student
proficiency does not depend on experience and advanced degrees. Economic theory
tells us that a better system would pay teachers according to their
productivity.

I also agree with this:

Looking a child in the eyes can fog anyone’s judgment. We can readily
produce policies that make a child smile in the short term, but lead to tears
down the road if that child fails to acquire the skills necessary for a
productive, fulfilling life.

You can substitute student for child and the statement still holds true. And in my case, the student to speak better English. I have seen so many teachers try to be nice at the expense of the students learning anything. To learn a language, one has to have discipline, and a good English teacher should instill that in the students.

My problem with the article is how to measure student and teacher performance. So much of how a student performs, I believe depends on the students themselves. Clever students make teachers feel like good teachers. Good students are often not the ones who get the best mark in class. That is, the students you do help are the ones you can improve the most.

From what I have heard of the Chinese system, quantitative results are everything. That is, the incentive for the teachers and the students is to get the best test scores. So the students who don't get high scores are often ignored because from the teacher's incentive is to get students to pass the university entrance examination. Couple this incentive with the corruption that is endemic to China, and I don't think that test scores the sole way to truly assess a student's ability to operate in the real world and a teacher's ability in helping the student to achieve there.

Be that as it may, most of the students I have taught have a discipline that I can only envy. Too bad, their system doesn't instill in them some imagination.