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1906 [lbo-talk] Joanne Barkin: Poverty and US International School Rankings -- rank: 1000

On Jan 31, 2011, at 3:07 PM, Michael Pollak wrote: > This is completely weird. Alpine doesn't even *have* a high school. And Oradell is a rich white suburb with a fine school (I once dated a girl from there and waltzed in to see a movie in her class). > > I suspect this data has fundamental flaws. The per pupil numbers are spending divided by enrollment, primary and secondary. All the raw data comes from reports to Census by the districts. Alpine has K-8, and it looks like those littl ...

Document Size:	5525
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Mon Jan 31 12:21:55 PST 2011

1907 [lbo-talk] ARS gets to the nub of the issue -- rank: 1000

Headline in today's DealBook, the NYT's M&A newsletter edited by Andrew Ross Sorkin: "Will Egypt Crisis Hurt Deal-Making?" First question on everyone's mind, of course. Doug

Document Size:	4746
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Mon Jan 31 09:07:09 PST 2011

1908 [lbo-talk] Joanne Barkin: Poverty and US International School Rankings -- rank: 1000

On Jan 31, 2011, at 10:34 AM, Michael Pollak wrote: > So are high school teachers in Tenafly, New Jersey paid the same as high school teachers in Englewood or Newark? Dunno about that, but the per pupil numbers are all over the place. E.g., among our old neighbors in the Garden State, total spending per pupil in places like Saddle River and Northern Valley are around $25,000. Alpine is $29,000. But Fairview and Oradell are under $13,000. Newark is $23,500 - higher than NYC's $18,000. But all ...

Document Size:	5516
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Mon Jan 31 08:51:18 PST 2011

1909 [lbo-talk] Joanne Barkin: Poverty and US International School Rankings -- rank: 1000

On Jan 31, 2011, at 8:35 AM, Alan Rudy wrote: > Without suggesting that there's not very much merit to this argument, > because there is a great deal of merit to it, the situation on this front > isn't as bad as it was before the Supreme Court determined that using local > property taxes to fund education was unconstitutional. Where things get > messed up is - as I understand it - that per student funding is done at the > state level in almost all states but that this applies ...

Document Size:	5951
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Mon Jan 31 08:35:56 PST 2011

1910 [lbo-talk] Joanne Barkin: Poverty and US International School Rankings -- rank: 1000

On Jan 31, 2011, at 6:53 AM, Michael Pollak wrote: > Two of the three major international tests -- the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study and the Trends in International Math and Science Study -- break down student scores according to the poverty rate in each school. The tests are given every five years. The most recent results (2006) showed the following: students in U.S. schools where the poverty rate was less than 10 percent ranked first in reading, first in science, and thir ...

Document Size:	6092
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Mon Jan 31 04:46:02 PST 2011

1911 [lbo-talk] How Much Do College Students Learn, and Study? -- rank: 1000

On Jan 30, 2011, at 7:18 PM, 123hop at comcast.net wrote: > You need leisure time to read. http://bls.gov/news.release/atus.htm The average American has 5.25 hours of leisure a day - somewhat more for men, somewhat less for women. That is not a trivial amount of time. More than half that time is spent watching TV. American spend an average of 1/2-3/4 an hour a day reading (men the low end, women the high). Those with kids spend an average of .04 hours a day - that's 2.4 minutes - reading to t ...

Document Size:	5585
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Sun Jan 30 17:51:49 PST 2011

1912 [lbo-talk] How Much Do College Students Learn, and Study? -- rank: 1000

On Jan 30, 2011, at 10:41 AM, brad wrote: > I think the missing variable is precisely family background No it's not. It's very present. But it's not the only effect. Schools matter too (and the OECD points out that the U.S. system does a rather poor job of compensating for poverty, because we badly underfund schools for the poor). I suspect that culture matters too - a country that can elevate Sarah Palin to the level of political celebrity has a problem with literacy and knowledge. But that' ...

Document Size:	5188
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Sun Jan 30 10:35:48 PST 2011

1913 [lbo-talk] new radio product -- rank: 1000

BEHIND THE NEWS with Doug Henwood "Best Music on an Economics & Politics Radio Show" Village Voice Best of NYC 2005 Just posted to my radio archive <http://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/Radio.html>: January 29, 2011 Mark LeVine of the University of California Irvine (and author of Heavy Metal Islam) and GIlbert Achcar of SOAS (and author of The Arabs and the Holocaust) talk (separately) about the popular uprisings in the Middle East Bhaskar Sunkara on the new magazine he edi ...

Document Size:	7644
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Sat Jan 29 18:50:16 PST 2011

1914 [lbo-talk] How Much Do College Students Learn, and Study? -- rank: 1000

On Jan 29, 2011, at 9:33 PM, Jordan Hayes wrote: > I would think it's the other way around: the better off and healthier you are, the more likely you'll be able to read. I mean, isn't the real problem nutrition? It works both ways. That's my point. Doug

Document Size:	4987
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Sat Jan 29 18:42:19 PST 2011

1915 [lbo-talk] How Much Do College Students Learn, and Study? -- rank: 1000

On Jan 27, 2011, at 10:33 PM, shag carpet bomb wrote: > just out of curiosity: what horrible fate will befall us if no one wants to read? This is from the the first volume of the OECD's latest PISA report: "Levels of reading literacy are more reliable predictors of economic and social well-being than is the quantity of education as measured by years at school or in post-school education." I.e., the better you can read, the better off and healthier you are. Doug

Document Size:	5216
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Sat Jan 29 17:59:16 PST 2011

1916 [lbo-talk] How Much Do College Students Learn, and Study? -- rank: 1000

Ok, so I asked my uncle-in-law, Christopher "Sandy" Jencks (who knows lots about this stuff) whether I was right that even after controlling for family income, test scores and other academic indicators predict life outcomes. Here's his response: > Yes, test scores (mostly math scores, actually) do seem to predict adult economic success independent of family background, partly because they predict how much schooling people get, but also partly because they predict performance in a lo ...

Document Size:	5462
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Sat Jan 29 17:47:59 PST 2011

1917 [lbo-talk] How Much Do College Students Learn, and Study? -- rank: 1000

On Jan 29, 2011, at 2:25 PM, Miles Jackson wrote: > I recognize I'm highjacking Doug's topic, but I really think it's more helpful to ask "How can we break down our educational apartheid sytem?" than to ask "Why don't kids read?" It's not just about poverty. There are plenty of nonpoor kids who can't read very well, or don't want to. This reminds me a little of the way that the nonprofit/foundation world really cares about low-wage workers, but don't care much about the va ...

Document Size:	5294
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Sat Jan 29 17:46:22 PST 2011

1918 [lbo-talk] Middle Eastern revo -- rank: 1000

On Jan 29, 2011, at 12:20 AM, Seth Kulick wrote: >> Mark is excellent, and a very good media guy. mlevine at uci.edu > >> I was his editor at Tikkun. > > Here LeVine is the interviewer, not the interviewee > (which I came across by way of Max Ajl's page, where he cites it here > http://www.maxajl.com/?p=4856 ) > > http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/features/2011/01/201112792728200271.html > > Interview with Hossam el-Hamalawy > Professor Mark LeVine in ...

Document Size:	5404
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Fri Jan 28 21:29:04 PST 2011

1919 [lbo-talk] How Much Do College Students Learn, and Study? -- rank: 1000

On Jan 28, 2011, at 7:02 PM, shag carpet bomb wrote: > At 05:19 PM 1/28/2011, Miles Jackson wrote: >> Doug Henwood wrote: >>> On Jan 28, 2011, at 4:50 PM, Joshua Morey wrote: >>> >>>> I am suggesting, on the other hand, that material concerns inhibit >>>> or facilitate students' ability to engage in the quantitative rigor >>> >>> That's absolutely true. The best predictors of school outcome are >>> income & poverty ...

Document Size:	5789
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Fri Jan 28 21:26:48 PST 2011

1920 [lbo-talk] Education, was How Much Do College Students -- rank: 1000

On Jan 28, 2011, at 6:30 PM, Carrol Cox wrote: > I haven't anything immediately to say on the topic, except to suggest that > we've run the "How much" thread pretty much to death, and that it might be > useful to explore what expectations are real, what are iusory¸in regard to > formal education (The School System). You realize that my question many posts back was *why* American kids don't want to read - what produces this mass antipathy to literacy. I didn't mention " ...

Document Size:	5286
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Fri Jan 28 21:24:41 PST 2011