Arte-non-Vi

Tag: Andrew Leigh

  • Do Teachers matter?

    Do Teachers Matter?.

    A psychology study hit the headlines last Friday under the banner

    ‘Teacher quality makes little difference, study shows’.

    AN AUSTRALIAN study has cast doubt over the “teacher effect”, by suggesting differences between teachers play only a minor role in how well a child will learn.

    The global study, led by the University of New England, monitored 500 pairs of identical twins during their first three years of school.

    They were divided into two groups: twins who shared the same teacher, and siblings who were split across different classrooms.

    The same genetics and home life ensured the twins had the same ability to learn. The study was designed to reveal any differences linked to their teacher alone.

    Professor Brian Byrne said the finding contradicted the views of educationalists who claimed teacher quality could account for a variance of up to 40 per cent in a child’s learning outcome.

    “Our study shows … the ‘teacher effect’ on differences in children’s acquisition of literacy skills in the early years of schooling is no more – and sometimes less – than 8 per cent,” Professor Byrne said.

    “This result is certainly in the direction you would expect if teachers do ‘make a difference’ but it is not very large.

  • Aust Labour Market and Recessions

    Andrew Leigh says:

    Jeff Borland has a splendid article (gated, sorry) in the latest Australian Economic Review on what happens to the labour market in recessions. 4 Key points:

    1. The impact across industries differs greatly. In past recessions, employment tends to fall in agriculture, manufacturing and construction, but also tends to rise in ‘recreation and personal services’, and sometimes also in the ‘community services’ industry.
    2. In percentage point terms, youth unemployment tends to rise more than prime-aged unemployment in recessions,
    3.  In recessions, long term unemployment tends to increase more than short-term unemployment.
    4. Unemployment inflows and outflows both increase
    Read on…

    What happens to the Australian labour market in recessions?.

  • Black-White Test Score Gap?

    The Black-White Test Score Gap Down-under.

    Andrew Leigh observes: Discussing NT schools, the CIS’s Helen Hughes writes:

    This week all Australian children in school years 3, 5, 7 and 9 sat numeracy and literacy tests for the second time. The tests are to give Australians an annual snapshot of basic educational progress. The first national ‘NAPLAN’ tests, held in May 2008, showed that 90% of children passed. Western Australia has made the tests available for government schools on the Internet, and Education Minister Julia Gillard has promised that all the 2009 test results will be posted by school.

    An overview of the 2008 tests showed that there was no ‘gap’ between Indigenous and non-Indigenous students. Indigenous students in mainstream schools in Victoria, Tasmania and the ACT had the same results as non-Indigenous students.

    I find this claim difficult to reconcile with the facts. Looking at the NAPLAN report(15mb), here’s year 7 numeracy:

    Table: Achievement Gap Yeat 7 Indigenous Students by State
    Achievement Year 7 Numeracy- Indigenous Students by State

    To put this into more concrete terms, the average score by year 7 Indigenous students is about the level of year 5 non-Indigenous students. (This is true even if you restrict the comparison to metropolitan schools.)

  • Where is Middle Australia?

    Another good one from Andrew Leigh.

    As we draw near to budget time, there has been plenty of talk about what “middle Australia” will get. But where exactly is the middle? To provide a more precise sense, I’ve tabulated the pre-tax annual income distributions for individuals and households, in the 2008-09 tax year. My raw data is the 2006 HILDA survey, which was roughly coincident with the 2006-07 tax year.

    Those numbers are then inflated by 8%, which is roughly what the budget papers suggest nominal wage growth has been over the past two years.

    Households
    1% $10,389
    5% $18,036
    10% $25,920
    25% $46,252
    50% $80,826
    75% $122,040
    90% $172,152
    95% $217,555
    99% $388,368
    Mean: $95,542

    Individuals
    1% $0
    5% $0
    10% $0
    25% $1,620
    50% $19,440
    75% $48,600
    90% $75,686
    95% $97,416
    99% $175,532
    Mean: $32,337

    In other words, half the households in Australia have a pre-tax income of less than $80,826, while 35% of households and 5% of individuals have pre-tax incomes over $100,000.

  • Staying at School Ain’t Silly

    Staying at School Ain’t Silly.

    Andrew Leigh –

    Nicholas Gruen draws my attention to a piece on school completion by CIS researcher Peter Saunders (based on a longer paper here) [Broken Link – see below], who argues:

    Three-quarters of students currently stay to year 12, and most of them benefit from higher earnings and better job prospects as a result. But this doesn’t mean the remaining quarter would enjoy these same outcomes if they too stayed on, for the more we extend schooling, the deeper we delve down the ability pool.

     

    Links:

  • Teacher Quality – Chalk and Cheese??

    How and why has teacher quality changed in Australia?. International research suggests that differences in teacher performance can explain a large portion of student achievement. Yet little is known about how the quality of the Australian teaching profession has changed over time. Using consistent data on the academic aptitude of new teachers, the report compares those who have entered the teaching profession in Australia over the past two decades. [Andrew Leigh]