Department of Urban Studies and Planning: 11.126J, 11.249
Department of Economics: 14.48J
Frank Levy
Spring 2000
PROBLEM SET 4 PROPOSED SOLUTIONS
1)
a) In this regression, we are comparing students in charter schools to those who are
not. We do not pick up at all whether charter schools have improved the schools
around them. We only can find whether the students going to charter schools
score higher than public school students.
b) The test might give us information about whether students attending charter
schools are better or worse off than public school students. However, there are
limits to this since we did not randomly assign students to charter schools. There
may be an endogeneity issue that charter school students might be naturally more
likely to have large or small increases in test scores.
c) What we really need is some measure of whether the students' schools are located
near charter schools or whether students' schools feel competition from charter
schools. For example, Eric's paper used how close the school was located to
charter schools. There may be other better measures. We really want to compare
students whose schools are affected by charter school competition to those
schools that are unaffected. Another problem with this approach is the
endogeneity of being located near a charter school. Charter schools might be
more likely to appear in an area that has declining test scores.
2)
a)
b)
There were a variety of acceptable answers. A good answer should discuss how
regurgitation of details is not the same as ownership of the knowledge. The
example from the video of the young girl who continued to believe that the Earth
followed a figure-8-like type of orbit around the sun is a prime example. She did
not understand the material until she had to demonstrate it.
No two answers were the same for this one. Basically, the best analyses showed
two states where one used words like "describe" or "explain" while the other used
words like "show" or "demonstrate."
3)
a)
1. It makes sense to pay more for an undergraduate specialty than for an undergraduate
major degree - i.e. that feature should be kept.
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2. It does not make sense to pay a bonus for undifferentiated Masters degree. It would
make sense to pay for a Masters degree that was related to classroom performance.
3. It does not make sense to have a salary schedule that does not vary by field since some
fields have much better outside opportunities than others.
4. It does not make particular sense to have steady increments in the salary schedule. We
know from the readings and class that the biggest attrition occurs in the first year and so
you should front load increments a little more.
b) The two major ideas here were as follows:
(i)
Have a program of serious mentoring in the first year to help get new
teachers
(ii)
Set up multiple routes into the profession where people with professional
experience in, say, engineering or as editors could get provisional status
with a minimal amount of classroom training and then begin to teach with
heavy support and evaluation.
c) Much of the potential objection would depend on whether current teachers were
"grandfathered" into the old schedule or not. Regardless, there would certainly be
objections to differential pay by subject and there would likely be objections to restricting
the kinds of Masters degrees that would qualify for extra salary.
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