I've been reading through The Knowing-Doing Gap by Pfeffer & Sutton and their Hard Facts book as well. I'll give full reviews later, but for now I wanted to focus on their discussions of "merit pay." Basically, they're against it.
But that's because they think merit pay is mostly done in the wrong ways and for the wrong reasons. Managers and board members assume that employees are motivated primarily by financial incentives, that group performance is essentially the sum of individual performance, and that organizations can get accurate measures of performance. All of this thinking, Pfeffer & Sutton argue, is questionable, especially in an education setting.
They then quote from lots of research showing that individualized merit pay in general doesn't improve organizational performance and typically is abandoned in relatively short order in large part because employees don't like it (again, especially in an education setting).
That doesn't mean, however, that they are completely opposed to some forms of merit pay. There are three variations that they argue can be very useful. First, paying people extra to develop skills or receive training that has been shown to improve performance (such as a terminal degree). Second, paying people extra for extra work (such as summer projects for faculty). Third, paying bonuses to groups (especially at the entire organizational level) for superior performance. Here's an example from the Education World website regarding possible ways to develop effective merit pay structures in educational settings - http://www.educationworld.com/a_issues/issues/issues374c.shtml.
I should add that there is a growing body of evidence that individualized performance pay can make a difference in student performance if you can adequately respond to some of the concerns mentioned earlier. See, for example, the Department of Education Reform study on recent seemingly successful performance pay experiments in Little Rock - http://www.uark.edu/ua/der/Research/performance_pay_ar.html. Also note that even a pro-union, presidential candidate on the Left (Barak Obama) is saying some positive things about merit pay - http://www.phillyburbs.com/pb-dyn/news/103-07062007-1373611.html.
So what does all of this research mean for the types of compensation schemes that institutions such as JBU should probably follow?
1) It will depend on the nature of your university. Compensation needs to support and buttress institutional mission and philosophy, so many of the details will depend on what you're attempting to accomplish.
2) In general, a flatter pay scale that makes everyone feel as if they're part of the same "team" is helpful. Put most of your "operating budget" resources here. Pfeffer & Sutton laud institutions, for example, that eliminate most titles, rank, etc. for similar reasons.
3) You should still set aside significant resources for these various forms of merit pay. Summer grants for all types of faculty activities that improve institutional performance should be increased (if you don't have them already). Training programs that have been proven effective should be supported with additional pay and not just training stipends. And "bonus pay" for all employees when the institution as a whole hits particular goals should be set up.
All of this seems fairly straightforward, but I've yet to find an institution like ours that actually follows these three fundamental points (but if you know of one, please tell me). We tend either to try to mimic the 19th century German research model or the late 20th century Business model. Neither seems very appropriate for our types of institutions, but such is the force of tradition and culture?
Saturday, June 30, 2007
Let's just get rid of tenure?
Awhile back, the "Freakonomics" blog made the argument that we should get rid of tenure - http://www.freakonomics.com/blog/2007/03/03/lets-just-get-rid-of-tenure/. Not surprisingly, most people in academia didn't like that idea very much as witnessed by the comments on the blog and by this Chronicle story - http://chronicle.com/weekly/v53/i29/29b00401.htm.
As a purely economic argument, I believe that the "Freakonomics" guys get the better of the debate, but that's because the parties involved were pretty much discussing the situation as if faculty are independent, rational actors. But that's just not the case. Teaching is a joint enterprise (working together is necessary for better overall performance), and academia does have certain traditions that make people feel comfortable and supported (which also has some effect on performance), so a certain egalitarianism and deference to tradition, which tenure appears to respond to, is probably warranted.
Note, however, that I did not make an "academic freedom" argument for tenure. That rationale seems less and less compelling in an age in which even Ward Churchill is still employed at a major research university.
I should add that at a personel level, I've never been much of a fan of tenure, and I've asked on numerous occasions that I not have a contract, just a regular "personnel action form." Because I appear to be almost alone on that request, however, it's been repeatedly denied. Oh well.
Where JBU has ended up, by the way, appears to balance these questions fairly well, in my opinion. Having tenure does give institutions key "decision points" that a system of one-year evaluations (what we used to have) does not. But we've (hopefully) avoided the problems of a "strong" tenure system by having three year contracts for all long-term, full-time teaching faculty members. That structure combines the egalitarianism and respect for tradition that most faculty would want with the fairly frequent economic decision points that the economists and business types would want. Check back with us in a few years to see whether this arrangement is balancing the various needs as well as I think it will and as well as I understand to be the case at other institutions with multi-year contracts and/or "weak" tenure.
As a purely economic argument, I believe that the "Freakonomics" guys get the better of the debate, but that's because the parties involved were pretty much discussing the situation as if faculty are independent, rational actors. But that's just not the case. Teaching is a joint enterprise (working together is necessary for better overall performance), and academia does have certain traditions that make people feel comfortable and supported (which also has some effect on performance), so a certain egalitarianism and deference to tradition, which tenure appears to respond to, is probably warranted.
Note, however, that I did not make an "academic freedom" argument for tenure. That rationale seems less and less compelling in an age in which even Ward Churchill is still employed at a major research university.
I should add that at a personel level, I've never been much of a fan of tenure, and I've asked on numerous occasions that I not have a contract, just a regular "personnel action form." Because I appear to be almost alone on that request, however, it's been repeatedly denied. Oh well.
Where JBU has ended up, by the way, appears to balance these questions fairly well, in my opinion. Having tenure does give institutions key "decision points" that a system of one-year evaluations (what we used to have) does not. But we've (hopefully) avoided the problems of a "strong" tenure system by having three year contracts for all long-term, full-time teaching faculty members. That structure combines the egalitarianism and respect for tradition that most faculty would want with the fairly frequent economic decision points that the economists and business types would want. Check back with us in a few years to see whether this arrangement is balancing the various needs as well as I think it will and as well as I understand to be the case at other institutions with multi-year contracts and/or "weak" tenure.
Friday, June 29, 2007
Know thyself?
Two of the best experiences I've been involved with this month were a StrengthsQuest (https://www.strengthsquest.com/) conference that I attended with some JBU colleagues and a Working Styles presentation by Ashley Blair of Union University (ablair@uu.edu) while at Kina Mallard's Department Chair Workshop at Gordon with a different set of JBU colleagues. In both cases, the heightened understanding of what our individual gifts and abilities were helped us tremendously to understand how we might work more effectively by ourselves and with others at our institution.
It was no surprise to me when the StrengthsQuest facilitator, who didn't indicate any particular spiritual inclinations herself, commented that Christian colleges seem particularly willing to engage in these sorts of conversations, in her mind because we believe that people are all created with unique talents that should be treasured and developed. Perhaps that's also why Azusa Pacific has become the headquarters for StrengthsQuest efforts in higher education (http://www.apu.edu/strengthsacademy/).
It was no surprise to me when the StrengthsQuest facilitator, who didn't indicate any particular spiritual inclinations herself, commented that Christian colleges seem particularly willing to engage in these sorts of conversations, in her mind because we believe that people are all created with unique talents that should be treasured and developed. Perhaps that's also why Azusa Pacific has become the headquarters for StrengthsQuest efforts in higher education (http://www.apu.edu/strengthsacademy/).
Laptops and liberal arts don't mix?
Another article that reinforces my occasional luddite biases (I say with irony as I type on my laptop) - http://chronicle.com/daily/2007/06/2007060601j.htm.
Are you as good of a teacher as you think?
Interesting article that sparked a bit of a discussion at our institution - http://www.magnapubs.com/issues/magnapubs_ff/4_6/news/600385-1.html.
Quiz early and often?
Glad to see that my past teaching practice has some research basis to it -http://chronicle.com/weekly/v53/i40/40a01401.htm.
Law school bad for mental health?
Remind me again why I'm always encouraging students to apply to law school? http://chronicle.com/daily/2007/06/2007060801j.htm?=atmj
4 Habits of Effective Librarians
My uncle's the head librarian at Hamilton College, so I always keep my eye open for these sorts of articles - http://chronicle.com/jobs/news/2007/05/2007052301c/careers.html.
The move to virtual education?
During a recent visit to Grand Canyon University (http://www.gcu.edu/), which has gone from 0 to 10,000+ students in their on-line university in three years, I was struck by their emphasis on "virtual communities" as one of their main selling points. That caused me to wonder once again why Christians haven't done more with the development of virtual worlds and virtual technologies.
It's not that Christians typically reject new technology, just witness the use of radio by John Brown, Sr., the founder of the institution that I work at. But when I hear about virtual technologies, it's for things like Case Western's Second Life admissions office (http://admission.case.edu/secondlife.asp), Virtual University (http://www.virtual-u.org/), Virtual Rome (http://www.romereborn.virginia.edu/), or experiments in virtual economies and related educational endeavors (http://chronicle.com/weekly/v53/i44/44a02501.htm?=attw). Almost never do I hear about people at Christian institutions or Christian organizations attempting something innovative and new along these lines except for Grand Canyon, an organization on the periphery of "our" world. Why?
Glenn Sanders (Glenn.Sanders@okbu.edu), a historian from Oklahoma Baptist, and I had a good chat about this problem during the recent CCCU Department Chair conference, and since he's chairing the Faith & History discussion of innovative pedagogy, something may actually come of that discussion, but it's still a puzzle. Maybe we just don't have the resources to accomplish something big like the efforts I mentioned earlier, and so we don't even try. But I sure hope it isn't because we're not creative enough or visionary enough to make this kind of effort. It's sorely needed.
It's not that Christians typically reject new technology, just witness the use of radio by John Brown, Sr., the founder of the institution that I work at. But when I hear about virtual technologies, it's for things like Case Western's Second Life admissions office (http://admission.case.edu/secondlife.asp), Virtual University (http://www.virtual-u.org/), Virtual Rome (http://www.romereborn.virginia.edu/), or experiments in virtual economies and related educational endeavors (http://chronicle.com/weekly/v53/i44/44a02501.htm?=attw). Almost never do I hear about people at Christian institutions or Christian organizations attempting something innovative and new along these lines except for Grand Canyon, an organization on the periphery of "our" world. Why?
Glenn Sanders (Glenn.Sanders@okbu.edu), a historian from Oklahoma Baptist, and I had a good chat about this problem during the recent CCCU Department Chair conference, and since he's chairing the Faith & History discussion of innovative pedagogy, something may actually come of that discussion, but it's still a puzzle. Maybe we just don't have the resources to accomplish something big like the efforts I mentioned earlier, and so we don't even try. But I sure hope it isn't because we're not creative enough or visionary enough to make this kind of effort. It's sorely needed.
Questioning the value of public education?
Seems like conservatives have gotten on the "eliminate public schools" kick recently. Here are a couple examples.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-goldberg12jun12,0,4683079.column?coll=la-opinion-rightrail
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/013/702uscvj.asp
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-goldberg12jun12,0,4683079.column?coll=la-opinion-rightrail
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/013/702uscvj.asp
IT Departments are a "poisonous force"?
The IT education world has gone nuts over this salvo by reknowned personal technology guru Walter Mossberg.
"The usefulness of the personal computer has peaked, kitchen appliances will one day be online, and large technology departments are slowing down the progress of mankind.
So said Walter S. Mossberg, personal-technology columnist for The Wall Street Journal, as he spoke Monday to more than 250 college presidents and other administrators attending the Chronicle Presidents Forum. He talked about trends in technology and about upcoming developments and products.
But he began his speech by calling the information-technology departments of large organizations, including colleges, "the most regressive and poisonous force in technology today."
They make decisions based on keeping technology centralized, he said. Although lesser-known software may be better, he said, technology departments are likely to use big-name products for their own convenience. That may keep costs down for an organization, he said. But it puts consistency above customization, preventing individuals from exploring what technology products are best suited to their own needs.
And change is coming, he said, whether IT departments can keep up or not. He laid out a vision of a future in which computer technology is far better integrated into everyday life."
"The usefulness of the personal computer has peaked, kitchen appliances will one day be online, and large technology departments are slowing down the progress of mankind.
So said Walter S. Mossberg, personal-technology columnist for The Wall Street Journal, as he spoke Monday to more than 250 college presidents and other administrators attending the Chronicle Presidents Forum. He talked about trends in technology and about upcoming developments and products.
But he began his speech by calling the information-technology departments of large organizations, including colleges, "the most regressive and poisonous force in technology today."
They make decisions based on keeping technology centralized, he said. Although lesser-known software may be better, he said, technology departments are likely to use big-name products for their own convenience. That may keep costs down for an organization, he said. But it puts consistency above customization, preventing individuals from exploring what technology products are best suited to their own needs.
And change is coming, he said, whether IT departments can keep up or not. He laid out a vision of a future in which computer technology is far better integrated into everyday life."
CCCU Department Chair Workshop
Led by Dr. Kina Mallard (kina.mallard@gordon.edu), the CCCU and Gordon College co-sponsored a much-needed conference for academic "middle management" (anyone in Christian higher education between the level of CAO and the faculty) -
http://www.cccu.org/conferences/eventID.412/past_conferences_detail.asp. A rough estimate would put the total of available attendees between 2,000 and 3,000, and since we had 54 people attend (2 times the number we had originally estimated would show up), there's still a huge potential audience. Kina and company did a fabulous job, and those who were involved appeared to find it very helpful, so I hope it will continue.
My own presentation at this conference focused on the way in which "middle management" has the difficult task of balancing the needs of those "above" and "below" them in the institution while still being leaders and problem solvers. If you're interested, I can send you the powerpoint of the presentation.
New research on Autism
Since Autism is such big news in our Education world, I found this latest research intriguing - http://www.freakonomics.com/blog/2007/06/13/revisiting-the-autism-epidemic/.
Requiring video resumes?
Along the lines of the Blink argument that our first impressions matter, most of those visual, here's a suggestion from the Freakonomics blog that we investigate requiring more video resumes instead of paper resumes. - http://www.freakonomics.com/blog/2007/06/29/why-isnt-the-video-resume-more-popular/.
A new way to increase attendance in class?
I'll be interested to see whether this practice spreads to other schools - http://sports.espn.go.com/ncaa/news/story?id=2896480.
Finger lengths correlate to SAT scores?
From the land of strange science studies - http://www.livescience.com/health/070522_finger_sats.html.
Demotivational posters
For those tired of those ubiquitous motivational posters, here's a website for you, courtesy of Rick Froman - http://despair.com/viewall.html.
Evaluating a CAO's performance?
Since JBU is starting a new faculty evaluation system predicated in large part on what the faculty said was important in their work, that's got me thinking about what's important in my work as a CAO at a small, Christian, liberal arts university. Attending a recent department chair conference at Gordon College, reading through a bunch of organization books, and preparing for an assessment conference have me contemplating similar ideas.
Most of the material I've been exposed to has emphasized outcomes instead of inputs, responsibilities instead of job descriptions, real performance instead of rhetoric, and measuring everything as much as possible. In my mind, that means that it should matter less what the percentage is of faculty we have with terminal degrees, what our faculty-student ratio is, what our average ACT scores are, what our mission statements are, how our annual reports are structured, and so on. What counts is whether any of these things actually affect performance.
So what are some of the performance areas for which a CAO should feel responsibility? I've listed these in my own priority order, though I'd welcome feedback from others.
1) Student learning in the classroom, most likely as measured by our overall IDEA student evaluation index. Our current undergraduate index incorporates the overall rating, the difficulty factor, and the integration factor for all of the courses that we evaluate each year using the IDEA forms. In the new system, we'll be able to produce an index for Grad and Professional Studies as well. And all of these indexes will be more accurate because we'll have more courses being evaluated. Since this combined rating balances all three aspects of our teaching evals (overall, difficulty, and integration), I would say that this is probably the best single indicator that I should be evaluated on. It is our main "product," good teaching.
2) Development of knowledge, critical thinking, maturity, etc. as demonstrated by results on CLA (if we started using that instrument), the SRA, various pre-post tests (if we wanted to do more with that mechanism), various exit/entrance exams (MFAT, GMAT, GRE, etc.), success in various competitions, admission by grad schools, and so on. This area probably needs the most work (something Rob Norwood has indicated also), but it's probably one of the most important in terms of "outcomes." If I had to pick just one index for this area, from what I know of it, I'd probably pick CLA, so perhaps we need to investigate further on moving to that system at JBU. But that doesn't apply to G&PS. A pre-post test system would work better in these contexts, but there aren't any ready-made, so I've asked Rick Ostrander to pilot a pre-post test concept in Gateway as a possible alternative means to start addressing this topic. I'm not quite sure how we'd use the SRA, but since it's in-house, perhaps we should explore that one a bit as well.
3) Completion of programs as measured by actual graduation rates compared to expected graduation rates. My understanding is that we could develop something along these lines (Washington Monthly uses exactly this calculation as one of the main indicators in their rankings system), but I've deferred to others on the details. My other problem is that I'm not sure how much this topic falls into my bailiwick or into Student Development. Maybe it's a number we "co-own"?
4) Extraordinary faculty achievement, most likely measured via our overall scholarship index for "scholarship" and via our service component of the faculty evaluation system for "service." There are lots of weaknesses in this data, especially since there isn't any external validation of excellence. There are citation indexes that R-1 institutions use to measure the relative value of scholarship, but from what I've heard, I don't see how those instruments could be used in our context. It might be worth some exploration, however.
5) Constituent satisfaction as measured by the faculty climate survey for faculty, NSSE, SSI, and alumni surveys for students, and probably some kind of personnel evaluation for anyone else. If I had to pick just one, I would pick the faculty climate survey because student satisfaction with academics is mostly covered in the IDEA evals, the alumni survey is not very reliable, and the SSI and NSSE deal with a lot of other issues besides academic ones. Furthermore, the faculty are my main constituency after the President (and cabinet). But if "faculty climate" isn't enough of an "outcome," I could be persuaded to pick just the NSSE, and maybe some key questions in NSSE, as the way to track constituency satisfaction with academics at JBU. We'd need something similar for G&PS, which we're apparently considering.
That's about as far as I've gotten at this point. I've asked our assessment and IR people to help put together reports on #1, #3, and #4 and Rick Froman to put together a report on the faculty climate survey. Once I see that data, I can start creating my own CAO "performance weighting" along the lines of what we now have for faculty in the evaluation system and for divisions in the ancillary budget process. That would give us a "balanced scorecard" (to use Business lingo) for all academic areas except the academic staff.
Most of the material I've been exposed to has emphasized outcomes instead of inputs, responsibilities instead of job descriptions, real performance instead of rhetoric, and measuring everything as much as possible. In my mind, that means that it should matter less what the percentage is of faculty we have with terminal degrees, what our faculty-student ratio is, what our average ACT scores are, what our mission statements are, how our annual reports are structured, and so on. What counts is whether any of these things actually affect performance.
So what are some of the performance areas for which a CAO should feel responsibility? I've listed these in my own priority order, though I'd welcome feedback from others.
1) Student learning in the classroom, most likely as measured by our overall IDEA student evaluation index. Our current undergraduate index incorporates the overall rating, the difficulty factor, and the integration factor for all of the courses that we evaluate each year using the IDEA forms. In the new system, we'll be able to produce an index for Grad and Professional Studies as well. And all of these indexes will be more accurate because we'll have more courses being evaluated. Since this combined rating balances all three aspects of our teaching evals (overall, difficulty, and integration), I would say that this is probably the best single indicator that I should be evaluated on. It is our main "product," good teaching.
2) Development of knowledge, critical thinking, maturity, etc. as demonstrated by results on CLA (if we started using that instrument), the SRA, various pre-post tests (if we wanted to do more with that mechanism), various exit/entrance exams (MFAT, GMAT, GRE, etc.), success in various competitions, admission by grad schools, and so on. This area probably needs the most work (something Rob Norwood has indicated also), but it's probably one of the most important in terms of "outcomes." If I had to pick just one index for this area, from what I know of it, I'd probably pick CLA, so perhaps we need to investigate further on moving to that system at JBU. But that doesn't apply to G&PS. A pre-post test system would work better in these contexts, but there aren't any ready-made, so I've asked Rick Ostrander to pilot a pre-post test concept in Gateway as a possible alternative means to start addressing this topic. I'm not quite sure how we'd use the SRA, but since it's in-house, perhaps we should explore that one a bit as well.
3) Completion of programs as measured by actual graduation rates compared to expected graduation rates. My understanding is that we could develop something along these lines (Washington Monthly uses exactly this calculation as one of the main indicators in their rankings system), but I've deferred to others on the details. My other problem is that I'm not sure how much this topic falls into my bailiwick or into Student Development. Maybe it's a number we "co-own"?
4) Extraordinary faculty achievement, most likely measured via our overall scholarship index for "scholarship" and via our service component of the faculty evaluation system for "service." There are lots of weaknesses in this data, especially since there isn't any external validation of excellence. There are citation indexes that R-1 institutions use to measure the relative value of scholarship, but from what I've heard, I don't see how those instruments could be used in our context. It might be worth some exploration, however.
5) Constituent satisfaction as measured by the faculty climate survey for faculty, NSSE, SSI, and alumni surveys for students, and probably some kind of personnel evaluation for anyone else. If I had to pick just one, I would pick the faculty climate survey because student satisfaction with academics is mostly covered in the IDEA evals, the alumni survey is not very reliable, and the SSI and NSSE deal with a lot of other issues besides academic ones. Furthermore, the faculty are my main constituency after the President (and cabinet). But if "faculty climate" isn't enough of an "outcome," I could be persuaded to pick just the NSSE, and maybe some key questions in NSSE, as the way to track constituency satisfaction with academics at JBU. We'd need something similar for G&PS, which we're apparently considering.
That's about as far as I've gotten at this point. I've asked our assessment and IR people to help put together reports on #1, #3, and #4 and Rick Froman to put together a report on the faculty climate survey. Once I see that data, I can start creating my own CAO "performance weighting" along the lines of what we now have for faculty in the evaluation system and for divisions in the ancillary budget process. That would give us a "balanced scorecard" (to use Business lingo) for all academic areas except the academic staff.
Religious Engagement of Undergraduates in America
An interesting website on a topic central to the sort of work that we're doing - http://religion.ssrc.org/reforum/.
Gender differences during intense competition?
Another story, the implications of which are not all that clear.
http://www.voxeu.org/index.php?q=node/320
http://www.voxeu.org/index.php?q=node/320
Is diversity "bad" for people?
Not sure what to make of this article summarizing the recent research by Putnam of "Bowling Alone" fame - http://www.city-journal.org/html/eon2007-06-25jl.html. See also this Chronicle piece with Putnam's rejoinder - http://chronicle.com/weekly/v53/i45/45b00401.htm?=attw.
Much ado about university rankings
There's been a lot of fussing lately by various schools regarding rankings of universities, particularly by U.S. News. See, for example, this USA Today story - http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2007-06-20-college-rankings_N.htm.
Simmering discontent has also giving rise to various alternative ways of doing college rankings - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_rankings, http://www.library.uiuc.edu/edx/rankings.htm. Of these, the most interesting approach, from my perspective, comes from Washington Monthly - http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2006/0609.collegechart.html. Also interesting is that some public colleges have now decided to set up their own system using more or less what Washington Monthly suggested, a focus on student outcomes via national instruments such as Collegiate Learning Assessment, National Survey of Student Engagement, etc. - http://chronicle.com/daily/2007/06/2007062602n.htm.
All of this fussing has lead some commentators, such as the economist Robert Samuelson writing in Newsweek, to condemn the presidents of these liberal arts colleges for their efforts at "soft censorship" - http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2007/06/college_rankings_arent_perfect.html.
Simmering discontent has also giving rise to various alternative ways of doing college rankings - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_rankings, http://www.library.uiuc.edu/edx/rankings.htm. Of these, the most interesting approach, from my perspective, comes from Washington Monthly - http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2006/0609.collegechart.html. Also interesting is that some public colleges have now decided to set up their own system using more or less what Washington Monthly suggested, a focus on student outcomes via national instruments such as Collegiate Learning Assessment, National Survey of Student Engagement, etc. - http://chronicle.com/daily/2007/06/2007062602n.htm.
All of this fussing has lead some commentators, such as the economist Robert Samuelson writing in Newsweek, to condemn the presidents of these liberal arts colleges for their efforts at "soft censorship" - http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2007/06/college_rankings_arent_perfect.html.
A new theory of poverty?
From Charles Karelis's new book, The Persistance of Poverty, as summarized in The Chronicle of Higher Education.
There in a nutshell is the modern poverty debate, with its four familiar alternatives. But a fifth response to the puzzle seems to have been entirely overlooked. What if the economics books are wrong? In particular, what if the choices that truly benefit typical human beings when they're poor are working little and not saving?
Common experience suggests the appeal of this alternative. Consider the following scenarios:
In the first, a poor worker with no car or bus fare must walk six miles to work. And let's say this long walk results in six blisters, and six unwashed dishes in the sink at home, and workplace mistakes that bring six reprimands from the boss. Suppose too that getting a bus ride for part of the way would reduce the worker's troubles proportionately, so that each mile she didn't have to walk would mean one fewer blister, unwashed dish, and reprimand. What will the poor worker give up to get a one-mile ride, given that she still has five miles to walk? Probably not much. After all, the sixth blister, unwashed dish, and reprimand tends to be drowned out, like a shout in a riot, by the other five anyway.
But now imagine she has just been given a five-mile bus ride, free. She has only one mile left to walk. What will she give up to get a one-mile ride now? Probably much more than in the first scenario because the difference between the discomfort of one blister, unwashed dish, and reprimand and the discomfort of none is far greater than the difference in discomfort between six and five. If the effect of getting a one-mile bus ride in the first scenario is like that of quieting a shout in a riot, in this scenario the effect of the one-mile bus ride is like that of quieting a shout in an otherwise quiet street.
The psychological phenomenon at work here has long been recognized and studied. Human attention tends to diminish progressively the impression made by successive stimuli. Hence the lesson of the walk to work appears to be generalizable. What holds for miles on the bus, and for the dollars that buy those miles, holds broadly for goods that are serving to relieve misery: The benefit grows faster than the consumption. The least useful bit of the good is the first, and the most useful bit is the last. In economists' jargon, the marginal utility of goods that serve to relieve misery is increasing rather than diminishing.
This simple insight casts a strong light on the conduct of the poor, because poor people, by definition, typically consume at low levels, where goods serve to relieve unhappiness and not to bring positive satisfaction. That means that very poor people typically benefit less than moderately poor people from small increases in consumption — not more. Given this crucial fact, their underemployment should hardly be surprising. One mile's bus fare will be worth very little sweat to someone with five miles left to walk, and certainly less sweat than one mile's bus fare would be worth to someone with only a couple of miles to go. In a word, the nonwork of the poor may be rational because of poverty itself. For the very same reason, we should expect serious poverty to weaken theinvestment motive for saving, including the willingness to invest in education.
Poverty can be expected to depress saving for another reason too: Contrary to the classical model, it is smoothing consumption, not letting it vary, that wastes the benefit of resources when one has insufficient amounts. Go back to the worker and her six-mile walk. If she has six miles' worth of bus fare that has to last her for two days, she will get more relief over all by spending her bus fare on one day than by saving half the money overnight and riding three miles each day. For we know that the relief from riding three miles only on a given day will be less than half as great as the relief from riding all six miles at once.
Many people find this view obvious once they hear it and wonder why it is not conventional wisdom. One reason may be that earlier versions (one proposed by economists associated with the University of Leiden, another by Milton Friedman and L.J. Savage) failed to stress how well the view is supported by everyday experience. Whatever the roots of the mistake, the fact that the marginal utility of goods that relieve misery is increasing and not diminishing should change our approach to poverty.
There in a nutshell is the modern poverty debate, with its four familiar alternatives. But a fifth response to the puzzle seems to have been entirely overlooked. What if the economics books are wrong? In particular, what if the choices that truly benefit typical human beings when they're poor are working little and not saving?
Common experience suggests the appeal of this alternative. Consider the following scenarios:
In the first, a poor worker with no car or bus fare must walk six miles to work. And let's say this long walk results in six blisters, and six unwashed dishes in the sink at home, and workplace mistakes that bring six reprimands from the boss. Suppose too that getting a bus ride for part of the way would reduce the worker's troubles proportionately, so that each mile she didn't have to walk would mean one fewer blister, unwashed dish, and reprimand. What will the poor worker give up to get a one-mile ride, given that she still has five miles to walk? Probably not much. After all, the sixth blister, unwashed dish, and reprimand tends to be drowned out, like a shout in a riot, by the other five anyway.
But now imagine she has just been given a five-mile bus ride, free. She has only one mile left to walk. What will she give up to get a one-mile ride now? Probably much more than in the first scenario because the difference between the discomfort of one blister, unwashed dish, and reprimand and the discomfort of none is far greater than the difference in discomfort between six and five. If the effect of getting a one-mile bus ride in the first scenario is like that of quieting a shout in a riot, in this scenario the effect of the one-mile bus ride is like that of quieting a shout in an otherwise quiet street.
The psychological phenomenon at work here has long been recognized and studied. Human attention tends to diminish progressively the impression made by successive stimuli. Hence the lesson of the walk to work appears to be generalizable. What holds for miles on the bus, and for the dollars that buy those miles, holds broadly for goods that are serving to relieve misery: The benefit grows faster than the consumption. The least useful bit of the good is the first, and the most useful bit is the last. In economists' jargon, the marginal utility of goods that serve to relieve misery is increasing rather than diminishing.
This simple insight casts a strong light on the conduct of the poor, because poor people, by definition, typically consume at low levels, where goods serve to relieve unhappiness and not to bring positive satisfaction. That means that very poor people typically benefit less than moderately poor people from small increases in consumption — not more. Given this crucial fact, their underemployment should hardly be surprising. One mile's bus fare will be worth very little sweat to someone with five miles left to walk, and certainly less sweat than one mile's bus fare would be worth to someone with only a couple of miles to go. In a word, the nonwork of the poor may be rational because of poverty itself. For the very same reason, we should expect serious poverty to weaken theinvestment motive for saving, including the willingness to invest in education.
Poverty can be expected to depress saving for another reason too: Contrary to the classical model, it is smoothing consumption, not letting it vary, that wastes the benefit of resources when one has insufficient amounts. Go back to the worker and her six-mile walk. If she has six miles' worth of bus fare that has to last her for two days, she will get more relief over all by spending her bus fare on one day than by saving half the money overnight and riding three miles each day. For we know that the relief from riding three miles only on a given day will be less than half as great as the relief from riding all six miles at once.
Many people find this view obvious once they hear it and wonder why it is not conventional wisdom. One reason may be that earlier versions (one proposed by economists associated with the University of Leiden, another by Milton Friedman and L.J. Savage) failed to stress how well the view is supported by everyday experience. Whatever the roots of the mistake, the fact that the marginal utility of goods that relieve misery is increasing and not diminishing should change our approach to poverty.
Review of "Survivor College"
I read a short book called Survivor College on best practices. The basic argument is that the educational "marketplace" is becoming more and more competitive (technology, demographics, for-profits, etc.), so if we're going to avoid the fate of Antioch College, we need to be more disciplined and creative. Here's a short summary of some of the author's suggestions, especially for those schools that have (in all programs?) less than 3000 students, that accept more than 70% of applicants, and have have aggregate financial resources per student of less than $50,000. Of the roughly 3500 accredited colleges and universities in the U.S., that's about 2000 schools "on the bubble," including JBU.
1) Avoid the big potential pitfalls: too much emphasis on "research for the sake of research," too much focus on athletics, too much discounting, too much kow-towing to various constituencies (typically the trustees or the faculty), not enough "brand" development.
2) Move to integrated marketing strategies with potentially all of admissions, marketing, etc. reporting to one person. Use Stamats for marketing and Noel-Levitz for retention as much as possible instead of going it alone. Gear your marketing to your "feeder" institutions instead of creating department-specific marketing on the one hand or national marketing on the other. These approaches may satisfy your internal constituents, but they're less effective in bringing in more students.
3) "Customer Service" matters more than we imagine. Adopt a customer service "pledge" that everyone has on his or her desk.
4) Set aside 2-3% of the entire operating budget for curricular and other types of innovation and reward people who do innovate.
5) Use merit pay in a big way.
6) Decentralize and streamline decision making as much as possible.
7) Curriculum should emphasize life-long learning skills (Gen Ed), a body of knowledge (the major), and significant application elements throughout, but especially at the culmination stage. Curriculum should also focus on outcomes, not inputs. Even accreditation bodies are getting on board with these concepts, so fight against the "large course load in the major" approaches that most faculty would prefer.
8) Develop a detailed "dashboard" or series of reports that you look at every year (he has a few lists of what he thinks are vital, most of them related to enrollment numbers, endowment totals, employee productivity, and other financial aspects of the institution.
9) Spend more time on developing leaders.
10) Provide more "open book" management in which all data that managers see is shared with everyone at the institution.
11) "Grow or die," but spell out in advance where the growth resources will go so that people know what they're working toward.
There was more, but I didn't want to replicate too much what JBU is already doing.
1) Avoid the big potential pitfalls: too much emphasis on "research for the sake of research," too much focus on athletics, too much discounting, too much kow-towing to various constituencies (typically the trustees or the faculty), not enough "brand" development.
2) Move to integrated marketing strategies with potentially all of admissions, marketing, etc. reporting to one person. Use Stamats for marketing and Noel-Levitz for retention as much as possible instead of going it alone. Gear your marketing to your "feeder" institutions instead of creating department-specific marketing on the one hand or national marketing on the other. These approaches may satisfy your internal constituents, but they're less effective in bringing in more students.
3) "Customer Service" matters more than we imagine. Adopt a customer service "pledge" that everyone has on his or her desk.
4) Set aside 2-3% of the entire operating budget for curricular and other types of innovation and reward people who do innovate.
5) Use merit pay in a big way.
6) Decentralize and streamline decision making as much as possible.
7) Curriculum should emphasize life-long learning skills (Gen Ed), a body of knowledge (the major), and significant application elements throughout, but especially at the culmination stage. Curriculum should also focus on outcomes, not inputs. Even accreditation bodies are getting on board with these concepts, so fight against the "large course load in the major" approaches that most faculty would prefer.
8) Develop a detailed "dashboard" or series of reports that you look at every year (he has a few lists of what he thinks are vital, most of them related to enrollment numbers, endowment totals, employee productivity, and other financial aspects of the institution.
9) Spend more time on developing leaders.
10) Provide more "open book" management in which all data that managers see is shared with everyone at the institution.
11) "Grow or die," but spell out in advance where the growth resources will go so that people know what they're working toward.
There was more, but I didn't want to replicate too much what JBU is already doing.
Review of "Freakonomics"
I read through Freakonomics, which I found highly entertaining, but I'm not sure there was that much of relevance from that book for our context. I guess the main thing I concluded is that if you are clever and work hard enough at it, then you can get a lot of real-world answers by analyzing numbers and data. Here are some questions that came to mind as I read the book that might be interesting to investigate. Maybe Rick Froman or Doyle Butts could have their classes take up some of these topics?
1) What factors in our IDEA evals seem most correlated to high overall evals? Why? Does that match what national data would say?
2) Does staff or faculty merit pay make a difference in terms of actual performance at JBU? Why or why not? Ditto for the national comparisons.
3) Do our students cheat? Why and to what extent?
4) Is our faculty pay scale correlated to teaching performance? (I already know the answer to this one, and it's clearly "no" with perhaps our highest performing cohort being our lowest paid group, female Instructors and Assistant Profs without terminal degrees.) Ditto for our staff pay scale.
5) Using the "happiness compensation" scales I've seen, how happy are our people and why?
6) Which factors REALLY matter in bringing students to JBU?
The list goes on. If you're interested in getting a taste of this "economics for the real world" approach, here's the Freakonomics blog site - http://www.freakonomics.com/blog/. And if you're interested in a rejoinder from John Lott, Jr., one of the main scholars with whom Levitt disagrees on a whole host of issues, see this review of Freedomnomics in The American - http://www.american.com/archive/2007/june-0607/john-lott-loaded.
1) What factors in our IDEA evals seem most correlated to high overall evals? Why? Does that match what national data would say?
2) Does staff or faculty merit pay make a difference in terms of actual performance at JBU? Why or why not? Ditto for the national comparisons.
3) Do our students cheat? Why and to what extent?
4) Is our faculty pay scale correlated to teaching performance? (I already know the answer to this one, and it's clearly "no" with perhaps our highest performing cohort being our lowest paid group, female Instructors and Assistant Profs without terminal degrees.) Ditto for our staff pay scale.
5) Using the "happiness compensation" scales I've seen, how happy are our people and why?
6) Which factors REALLY matter in bringing students to JBU?
The list goes on. If you're interested in getting a taste of this "economics for the real world" approach, here's the Freakonomics blog site - http://www.freakonomics.com/blog/. And if you're interested in a rejoinder from John Lott, Jr., one of the main scholars with whom Levitt disagrees on a whole host of issues, see this review of Freedomnomics in The American - http://www.american.com/archive/2007/june-0607/john-lott-loaded.
Review of "Blink"
Here's another installment.
I'm finally reading Gladwell's "Blink," a book that Doyle Butts recommended to me a long time ago. Lots of interesting information and a good read, but not surprisingly, I'm focused on its relevance to our work at institutions like JBU.
One of the examples referred to is that students rate teacher effectiveness pretty much the same after 3 seconds as they do after 3 months. I googled the author of that study, Nalini Ambady, and found out that according to her research, this rating of "thin-sliced" teacher effectiveness also correlates to actual teacher effectiveness (as judged by how much content students will learn from a teacher). In short, students can, as a group, pretty much tell after three seconds whether someone is a good teacher or not.
So who needs end of the semester evaluations, full-day job interviews, or 4 years of teacher education preparation? Just videotape someone for a few seconds, send it around for blind responses, and presto, decision made. Doesn't sound right, huh?
Here's a link to a related "thin-slicing" article that includes a summary of Ambady's research in case you're interested. http://www.apa.org/monitor/mar05/slices.html
According to Gladwell's book, the reason we don't trust these snap judgments is that we overvalue our own expert opinion. He includes lots of examples where psychologists and doctors, to name two groups, collect more and more information that helps them feel more confident in their diagnoses but in fact have no influence in making their findings more accurate. They (we) get overwhelmed by the clutter of input and don't know what they're really supposed to be looking for. In our Enlightenment mindset, we assume that more information is always better, but it's not.
What our subconscious minds are doing, however, is judging some intuitively perceived patterns regarding the key aspects of what makes a teacher effective. Gladwell gives some examples of how in a field such as coronary care, scientists have determined what limited input really matters and what is "noise." Another example is Gottman's research on divorce, which correlates most strongly with the levels of "contempt" displayed in a marriage (most everything else being secondary "clutter").
Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find any research on teacher effectiveness that defines the key two or three factors to look for (what our subconscious is picking up on in those 3 seconds) and how to measure them. We can in general trust our collective snap judgments about someone's teaching effectiveness and that these snap judgments are in general correlated to real teaching effectiveness, but we appear not to know, yet, what it is about these judgments that we can trust. Might make for an interesting academic career for some educational researcher or psychologist some day. In the meantime, we'll have to muddle through with our current way of doing things.
I'm finally reading Gladwell's "Blink," a book that Doyle Butts recommended to me a long time ago. Lots of interesting information and a good read, but not surprisingly, I'm focused on its relevance to our work at institutions like JBU.
One of the examples referred to is that students rate teacher effectiveness pretty much the same after 3 seconds as they do after 3 months. I googled the author of that study, Nalini Ambady, and found out that according to her research, this rating of "thin-sliced" teacher effectiveness also correlates to actual teacher effectiveness (as judged by how much content students will learn from a teacher). In short, students can, as a group, pretty much tell after three seconds whether someone is a good teacher or not.
So who needs end of the semester evaluations, full-day job interviews, or 4 years of teacher education preparation? Just videotape someone for a few seconds, send it around for blind responses, and presto, decision made. Doesn't sound right, huh?
Here's a link to a related "thin-slicing" article that includes a summary of Ambady's research in case you're interested. http://www.apa.org/monitor/mar05/slices.html
According to Gladwell's book, the reason we don't trust these snap judgments is that we overvalue our own expert opinion. He includes lots of examples where psychologists and doctors, to name two groups, collect more and more information that helps them feel more confident in their diagnoses but in fact have no influence in making their findings more accurate. They (we) get overwhelmed by the clutter of input and don't know what they're really supposed to be looking for. In our Enlightenment mindset, we assume that more information is always better, but it's not.
What our subconscious minds are doing, however, is judging some intuitively perceived patterns regarding the key aspects of what makes a teacher effective. Gladwell gives some examples of how in a field such as coronary care, scientists have determined what limited input really matters and what is "noise." Another example is Gottman's research on divorce, which correlates most strongly with the levels of "contempt" displayed in a marriage (most everything else being secondary "clutter").
Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find any research on teacher effectiveness that defines the key two or three factors to look for (what our subconscious is picking up on in those 3 seconds) and how to measure them. We can in general trust our collective snap judgments about someone's teaching effectiveness and that these snap judgments are in general correlated to real teaching effectiveness, but we appear not to know, yet, what it is about these judgments that we can trust. Might make for an interesting academic career for some educational researcher or psychologist some day. In the meantime, we'll have to muddle through with our current way of doing things.
Review of "Education Myths"
More of my random thoughts as I read books on my vacation/sabbatical. The author of this book, Jay Greene, is the head of the Department of Education Reform at the UofA, an endowed research department set up with Walton money. Here's the departmental website if you're interested. http://www.uark.edu/ua/der/index.html
The book runs through 18 "myths" about education in America. Here's the list. I'll add a few comments to the points that particularly caught my attention.
1) Schools perform poorly because they need more money. The basic argument here is that even after adjusting for inflation, the cost per pupil to educate a student in the U.S. has roughly doubled in the last 30 years, but test scores, however defined, have roughly stayed flat. In absolute terms, you obviously can't educate someone at no cost, but the law of diminishing returns appears to have set in a long time ago, so the answer clearly isn't just about more money. Lots of Catholic schools, for instance, even after adjusting for various socioeconomic factors, achieve better test results at half of the per pupil cost or less.
2) Special Education programs are the cause of the increasing costs of public education. Lots of interesting information here, in particular that the number of handicapped children has not gone up. It's the percentage with learning disabilities that has seen the big spike (roughly quadrupling in recent decades). And a significant proportion of this spike is due to funding mechanisms that reward schools for designating larger and larger percentages of their kids as learning disabled, so the marginal kids are increasingly so labled.
3) Schools are helpless to overcome various social problems. The fact that some teachers and schools with similar problems do appear to overcome these hurdles would seem to indicate the fallacy of the argument.
4) Lowering class sizes makes a big difference in performance. We've had a similar discussion in OAA in which the various articles that have been passed around all seem to indicate that smaller class sizes have very little affect on student performance except in very particular circumstances (senior seminars, for instance).
5) Teacher Certification and teacher experience lead to substantially better instruction. This one surprised me in that we're in the business of telling people that teacher certification is important for effective preformance. Our pay scale is also predicated on the idea that years of experience make us better instructors. The book makes some powerful arguments, however, that our educational instruction should be focused much, much more on pedagogical practice instead of pedagogical theory, and that our pay scales should be much, much flatter (and focused on performance) than they are. I'll be interested to have the Education people read this chapter and give me their feedback.
6) Teachers are paid very poorly. The key point of disagreement is whether you count "hourly" or "annual" rates. Using Department of Labor statistics, hourly rates for teachers are better than for most engineers! And if you include benefit packages (which are typically better for teachers than in most industries), the results are skewed even more toward teachers. The "annual" rate, however, is the sticking point because most teachers only work 9 months. The way we used to calculate summer contracts and dean/division chair pay, for example, my supposed hourly rate actually went down when I was promoted to Associate Dean, but I got paid more because I was working the full year. By the way, using these Department of Labor charts and standards, the average teacher makes about $31/hour, the average engineer about $29.5/hour, and the average CCCU prof between $27 and $30/hour (I calculated the total two different ways, but the Dept. of Labor way would put us closer to $30).
7) Schools are getting worse over the decades. As Greene argued earlier, performance outcomes are roughly flat over the decades, not better or worse, despite the increasing resources.
8) Nearly all students graduate from high school. Basically, school systems self report and have every incentive to over report.
9) Non-academic barriers prevent many from attending college. Using some sophisticated models of college readiness, you end up with figures pretty close to the numbers who actually attend college. The real concern, therefore, is not affirmative action (pro or con) or some other political solution but finding ways to get more kids prepared for college. Not much we can do from our "university" end.
10) High stakes testing results are distorted by cheating and teaching to the test. He contends, with lots of number crunching, that it isn't happening in any significant way despite the occasional anecdotes.
11) Exit exams cause more students to drop out. Ditto.
12) Accountability systems impose large "unpaid mandates" on the schools. Ditto.
13) The evidence on vouchers is mixed. Using just the "verifiable" studies, the evidence is clearly favorable.
14) Private schools do better because they're much richer. Back to the Catholic school comparison that most private schools educate better with less money per student.
15) School choice undermines the public school system. Again, what solid evidence that exists appears to conclude that competition makes all of the players better.
16) Private schools push out disabled kids. Again, what solid evidence that exists appears to contradict this idea.
17) Private schools undermine democratic values. Ditto.
18) Private schools are more racially segregated. Ditto.
If you're still reading, the points I took away from this book are three.
1) If accountability is increasingly the wave of the future as this book suggests (along with lots of other things I've read), then we need to get in front of it with better systems of measuring that we're doing what we're saying (more pre/post tests, for example).
2) If "choice" is also a wave of the future, then we need to be clear and up front about what we're offering in this myriad of choices.
3) If smaller classes, higher pay across the board, and training in pedagogical theory haven't been shown to be particularly effective in affecting student performance (which is how I might summarize many of OAA's emphases over the 13 years that I've been at JBU), then we need to spend some time thinking and talking about what will help our students succeed.
The book runs through 18 "myths" about education in America. Here's the list. I'll add a few comments to the points that particularly caught my attention.
1) Schools perform poorly because they need more money. The basic argument here is that even after adjusting for inflation, the cost per pupil to educate a student in the U.S. has roughly doubled in the last 30 years, but test scores, however defined, have roughly stayed flat. In absolute terms, you obviously can't educate someone at no cost, but the law of diminishing returns appears to have set in a long time ago, so the answer clearly isn't just about more money. Lots of Catholic schools, for instance, even after adjusting for various socioeconomic factors, achieve better test results at half of the per pupil cost or less.
2) Special Education programs are the cause of the increasing costs of public education. Lots of interesting information here, in particular that the number of handicapped children has not gone up. It's the percentage with learning disabilities that has seen the big spike (roughly quadrupling in recent decades). And a significant proportion of this spike is due to funding mechanisms that reward schools for designating larger and larger percentages of their kids as learning disabled, so the marginal kids are increasingly so labled.
3) Schools are helpless to overcome various social problems. The fact that some teachers and schools with similar problems do appear to overcome these hurdles would seem to indicate the fallacy of the argument.
4) Lowering class sizes makes a big difference in performance. We've had a similar discussion in OAA in which the various articles that have been passed around all seem to indicate that smaller class sizes have very little affect on student performance except in very particular circumstances (senior seminars, for instance).
5) Teacher Certification and teacher experience lead to substantially better instruction. This one surprised me in that we're in the business of telling people that teacher certification is important for effective preformance. Our pay scale is also predicated on the idea that years of experience make us better instructors. The book makes some powerful arguments, however, that our educational instruction should be focused much, much more on pedagogical practice instead of pedagogical theory, and that our pay scales should be much, much flatter (and focused on performance) than they are. I'll be interested to have the Education people read this chapter and give me their feedback.
6) Teachers are paid very poorly. The key point of disagreement is whether you count "hourly" or "annual" rates. Using Department of Labor statistics, hourly rates for teachers are better than for most engineers! And if you include benefit packages (which are typically better for teachers than in most industries), the results are skewed even more toward teachers. The "annual" rate, however, is the sticking point because most teachers only work 9 months. The way we used to calculate summer contracts and dean/division chair pay, for example, my supposed hourly rate actually went down when I was promoted to Associate Dean, but I got paid more because I was working the full year. By the way, using these Department of Labor charts and standards, the average teacher makes about $31/hour, the average engineer about $29.5/hour, and the average CCCU prof between $27 and $30/hour (I calculated the total two different ways, but the Dept. of Labor way would put us closer to $30).
7) Schools are getting worse over the decades. As Greene argued earlier, performance outcomes are roughly flat over the decades, not better or worse, despite the increasing resources.
8) Nearly all students graduate from high school. Basically, school systems self report and have every incentive to over report.
9) Non-academic barriers prevent many from attending college. Using some sophisticated models of college readiness, you end up with figures pretty close to the numbers who actually attend college. The real concern, therefore, is not affirmative action (pro or con) or some other political solution but finding ways to get more kids prepared for college. Not much we can do from our "university" end.
10) High stakes testing results are distorted by cheating and teaching to the test. He contends, with lots of number crunching, that it isn't happening in any significant way despite the occasional anecdotes.
11) Exit exams cause more students to drop out. Ditto.
12) Accountability systems impose large "unpaid mandates" on the schools. Ditto.
13) The evidence on vouchers is mixed. Using just the "verifiable" studies, the evidence is clearly favorable.
14) Private schools do better because they're much richer. Back to the Catholic school comparison that most private schools educate better with less money per student.
15) School choice undermines the public school system. Again, what solid evidence that exists appears to conclude that competition makes all of the players better.
16) Private schools push out disabled kids. Again, what solid evidence that exists appears to contradict this idea.
17) Private schools undermine democratic values. Ditto.
18) Private schools are more racially segregated. Ditto.
If you're still reading, the points I took away from this book are three.
1) If accountability is increasingly the wave of the future as this book suggests (along with lots of other things I've read), then we need to get in front of it with better systems of measuring that we're doing what we're saying (more pre/post tests, for example).
2) If "choice" is also a wave of the future, then we need to be clear and up front about what we're offering in this myriad of choices.
3) If smaller classes, higher pay across the board, and training in pedagogical theory haven't been shown to be particularly effective in affecting student performance (which is how I might summarize many of OAA's emphases over the 13 years that I've been at JBU), then we need to spend some time thinking and talking about what will help our students succeed.
Review of "The Contrarian Leader"
The problem with being on sabbatical is that I have time to read, and reading leads to thinking, and thinking leads to action, but I'm sabbatical, so there's no chance for action . . . yet. The first book I read on this sabbatical was The Contrarian Leader, lent to me by Mandy Moore, a prof at JBU.
To be honest, I wasn't that excited about Sample's writing through his first five points. Thinking gray is all I ever heard in grad school as a historian. Thinking free is what much of my "wargaming" time is about (and doing so gets me in trouble with faculty more often than not). Listening first . . . and artfully has been the slow process of almost 20 years of marriage to someone whose MBTI is almost exactly opposite of mine. Understanding that experts are of only limited value makes sense to someone who believes in term limits. Being suspicious of pseudoscience comes naturally to an academic (I hope).
So it wasn't until Sample got to "supertexts" that I really started paying attention. That discussion appealed to my historian's instincts and does run counter to much of what I'm bombarded with on a daily basis. The rest of the book, perhaps as a consequence, was more intriguing.
I really resonated with the delegating authority line, and it helped me understand his point about delaying decisions to read that he said "reasonably" delay. My definition of "reasonably" is way different than that of Jim Worthington, the first person who started quoting this book to me.
Ignoring sunk costs is difficult for academia, so that line was helpful. Not humiliating a defeated opponent is straightforward, but it's more difficult in practice than one might think when much of what you do, such as letting an employee go, is pretty public. I struggle with knowing which hill to die on because I'm naturally competitive, so that one was helpful as well. "Doing" VPAA is so much easier than "being" VPAA for me, so I guess I found that one difficult to understand, except perhaps in the sense of involvement I have in the job.
The section I took most to heart was the part about working for those who work for you and spending much of your time in their recruitment, evaluation, and support. The corollary that these are really the only people that you can influence and even then only to a limited degree impacted me also.
The last section on "original" thinking as the key to success is somewhat problematic for someone who believes, and I quote,"the Greeks were the only ones to have had original thoughts. Ever since then, we merely quote each other in increasingly complicated detail." The "originality" in our modern world comes from putting the right pieces together, not in coming up with new pieces.
In general, yes, a pretty good leadership book, grounded, as it appears to be, in some serious historical reflection, unlike much of the leadership literature that I've seen.
For my JBU work, I mainly concluded two things. First, I need to follow up on our recent faculty evaluation efforts with a more systematic approach for dealing with non-faculty evaluations. Second, I should read The Prince again.
To be honest, I wasn't that excited about Sample's writing through his first five points. Thinking gray is all I ever heard in grad school as a historian. Thinking free is what much of my "wargaming" time is about (and doing so gets me in trouble with faculty more often than not). Listening first . . . and artfully has been the slow process of almost 20 years of marriage to someone whose MBTI is almost exactly opposite of mine. Understanding that experts are of only limited value makes sense to someone who believes in term limits. Being suspicious of pseudoscience comes naturally to an academic (I hope).
So it wasn't until Sample got to "supertexts" that I really started paying attention. That discussion appealed to my historian's instincts and does run counter to much of what I'm bombarded with on a daily basis. The rest of the book, perhaps as a consequence, was more intriguing.
I really resonated with the delegating authority line, and it helped me understand his point about delaying decisions to read that he said "reasonably" delay. My definition of "reasonably" is way different than that of Jim Worthington, the first person who started quoting this book to me.
Ignoring sunk costs is difficult for academia, so that line was helpful. Not humiliating a defeated opponent is straightforward, but it's more difficult in practice than one might think when much of what you do, such as letting an employee go, is pretty public. I struggle with knowing which hill to die on because I'm naturally competitive, so that one was helpful as well. "Doing" VPAA is so much easier than "being" VPAA for me, so I guess I found that one difficult to understand, except perhaps in the sense of involvement I have in the job.
The section I took most to heart was the part about working for those who work for you and spending much of your time in their recruitment, evaluation, and support. The corollary that these are really the only people that you can influence and even then only to a limited degree impacted me also.
The last section on "original" thinking as the key to success is somewhat problematic for someone who believes, and I quote,"the Greeks were the only ones to have had original thoughts. Ever since then, we merely quote each other in increasingly complicated detail." The "originality" in our modern world comes from putting the right pieces together, not in coming up with new pieces.
In general, yes, a pretty good leadership book, grounded, as it appears to be, in some serious historical reflection, unlike much of the leadership literature that I've seen.
For my JBU work, I mainly concluded two things. First, I need to follow up on our recent faculty evaluation efforts with a more systematic approach for dealing with non-faculty evaluations. Second, I should read The Prince again.
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