Comments for Kevin Denny: Economics more-or-less

Comment on Progression to third level, early school leaving and fee vs. non-fee paying schools by Michael K

Michael K — Mon, 20 May 2013 21:13:44 +0000

Absolutely agree, Kevin. It will be interesting to see whether the Irish Times will publish these proper league tables in future rather than the current “primitive” ones. I look forward to following another one of your blogs in the near future.

Comment on Progression to third level, early school leaving and fee vs. non-fee paying schools by kevin denny

kevin denny — Mon, 20 May 2013 20:08:18 +0000

Again, I have no major disagreement with you. I am somewhat conflicted about the Irish Times school lists. Obviously the reason they publish them is that they are very popular with their readers. Since they don’t control for anything, they are measuring output not Value Added which is really what parents need to know- I would argue. That said, I am strongly in favour of proper “league tables” and the IT are raising the game. I think they published an article by me arguing for proper tables & I have probably blogged about it. The seeming consensus in the education sector that parents should be kept in the dark about a vital decision bothers me. The culture of secrecy is alive & well. If we had proper tables we might find out that lots of non-fee paying schools are doing a fine job & some fee-paying one’s not so.
One other issue, relevant to the above, which you refer to is about improving the working of the education system. To do that, we would have to measure how different schools etc are doing and then figure out why is there such variation. The international (mostly US) evidence suggests that teacher quality is central. And that seems to be a taboo subject.

Comment on New evidence on class size effects by kevin denny

kevin denny — Mon, 20 May 2013 19:56:03 +0000

Eh , no. The fact that the US coefficient is not statistically significant just means we can’t reject 0 but it is still positive so we can’t reject the hypothesis that it has certain positive values either.
It is a little bit surprising in that it is more common to find the opposite but many studies find little or no effect. We discuss this at the end of the paper and suggest a number of possible reasons for the counter-intuitive result. You can find working paper versions on-line which aren’t very different. Our view would be that the opposite result, smaller classes better, are based on hypotheses about what happens in smaller classes that haven’t been directly tested. So we are not overly obliged to come up with an explanation when the opposite isn’t obvious empirically or a priori.

Comment on New evidence on class size effects by cormac

cormac — Mon, 20 May 2013 18:47:06 +0000

Looks v interesting. If I may, I’m a bit confused by the last two sentences of the abstract. If the results are only statistically significant for the UK, then presumably the conclusion in the sentence before should read ‘it was found that increases in class size lead to improvements in students’ mathematics scores in the UK’ , or have I misunderstood?.
It seems a surprising correlation doesn’t it – what is the physical explanation offered for better results in larger classes?

Comment on New evidence on class size effects by Ninth Level Ireland » Blog Archive » New evidence on class size effects

Mon, 20 May 2013 15:06:23 +0000

[…] “A paper I co-authored with Veruska Oppedisano (London Metropolitan University) has just been published in Labour Economics. It’s gated (but obviously worth $31.50 of which I won’t get a red cent) …” (more) […]

Comment on Progression to third level, early school leaving and fee vs. non-fee paying schools by Michael K

Michael K — Sat, 18 May 2013 12:14:25 +0000

I agree with you, Kevin, and I think, based on anecdotal evidence and I have to be careful what I say, researches like the one you mentioned are ignored, not believed or treated with a degree of naivety by a vast majority of people in the higher socio-economic groups.

I am not criticising parents who are committed to the best interests of their child’s education, but to make a blanket statement that their child would somehow only receive the best education in a fee paying school without knowing the facts is simplistic and unfair.

The Irish times may have ran the story, but I am sure it was not a front page article. On the other hand I also know that the same paper publishes an annual piece which shows the top feeder schools of leaving cert students who progress onto third level. In almost every list naturally fee paying schools make up the bulk of the sum. This simple statistic is often used by people who defend these institutions as cannon fodder to strengthen the case that they offer a higher quality of education when in fact such “ranking lists” are not a credible way to measure the quality of education. Maybe the Irish Times like to push this agenda because they know that they are targeting an audience which are either people who went to these schools themselves or have children attending them? If people like what they read they will buy a paper which pushes the agenda mentioned above.

There needs to be a serious debate in this country about whether we can improve our education system and whether it is viable to give state subsidies to these schools. There is no such thing as a private education in Ireland, to be precise it is semi-private. In other countries such as Germany private schools are seen as an elitist phenomena and the overwhelming majority are educated in non-fee paying schools. The non-fee paying secondary sector in Germany is not necessarily better and pupils are generally well-educated over there. If one considers to send their child to a private institute then they have the freedom to do this, however the subsidies from the German State are either very small or they get absolutely nothing. I think the latter is the case, but I’m not too sure.

People in Ireland do have a choice and there are some very good non-fee paying schools. It seems though that in middle-class Ireland especially a lot of people have no problem forking out 30 000 Euro per child (that’s only the fees for their secondary school lifetime) and then saying that they are making real sacrifices for their child.

Don’t we all want to make sacrifices for our child and does it in turn mean that people who don’t spend this money do not make the same effort?

Comment on Lecturer’s fluency can make students over-confident by cormac

cormac — Fri, 17 May 2013 09:24:32 +0000

Yes, I think scientists can often be unfairly dismissive of experiments in psychology and in education. In fact, our own studies share many of the same problems, but one difference is that there is always an army of researchers ready to test the results with their own versions of the study – this ‘justification’ is what gives science its real strength. So one like to see the study above done again and again, on different classes – which I think is feasible in a large college

Comment on Progression to third level, early school leaving and fee vs. non-fee paying schools by kevin denny

kevin denny — Fri, 17 May 2013 08:04:05 +0000

Michael, good points. When I blogged this, Sean Flynn ran the story in the Irish Times & it probably got some attention. Well for a day anyway & then there was something else in the news. So I doubt it changed many peoples minds. Which is a shame as yes it is rather significant. But long held beliefs are hard to shake, especially if you have spent money based on them. I think you may be right to suggest that its partly about social cachet. If you want your kids to be part of the rugby playing class, where are you going to send them( in Dublin anyway)? What I find harder to understand is that many people who work in the education sector have a lack of interest in differences between schools & between teachers:why are some good and others not so good? I think people don’t want to open this particular can of worms.

Comment on Lecturer’s fluency can make students over-confident by kevin denny

kevin denny — Fri, 17 May 2013 07:55:40 +0000

Cormac, I remember Feynman in his books was very negative about psychology, somewhat unfairly I believe. Replication is a big issue in psychology & its getting a lot of attention these days. Indeed its a problem in the social sciences. Journals are not interested in replication or in “negative results” i.e. not rejecting the null of no effect. Me & a colleague had a paper rejected by a leading medical journal because it was deemed a “negative result” which it wasn’t really but even if it was that would be important. But lack of replication occurs in the natural sciences too: if its a difficult experiment to do & you’re unlikely to get it published why bother? Leaving aside fraudelent papers.

Comment on Progression to third level, early school leaving and fee vs. non-fee paying schools by Michael K

Michael K — Thu, 16 May 2013 21:58:20 +0000

I know the paper you mentioned in your piece. The research was conducted by Danny Pfeffermann and Mary Landsmann and is published in the Annals of Applied Statistics. I read it myself and it is very interesting indeed. It really does underline what most people already knew: That education in a fee-paying school isn’t better than in a non-fee paying school.

Speaking from anecdotal evidence I know a large amount of parents who intend to send their kids to a fee paying school because they want to give their child “the best opportunity” and almost mention with disgust that a non-fee paying school is not an option. Whilst I appreciate their caring commitment for their child’s education, I do think it is naive to make such a blanket statement without knowing the facts.

I wonder whether many parents know about this research and if they do, whether they turn a blind eye to it. Fee paying schools are very popular in this country and in comparison to some other countries they are fairly widespread. If the research is true, which I believe it is, the following question needs to be asked: Why do a lot of parents, especially in middle class areas of Dublin, send their kids to a fee paying school when they could be getting the same or even better education in a non-fee paying school?

Is it really about the education or do parents want their children to enjoy better facilities and mix with other children from a higher socio-economic group?