News
- October 24, 2012
In this seminar Sean Reardon from Stanford University will addresses this question. First, he will describe trends in the “income-achievement gap” (the test score gap between children from low and high income families). The evidence shows that the association between income and achievement has grown by 40 percent in recent decades, while the association between race and achievement has held steady or even declined. Second, he will describe trends in the relationship between family income and the quality of colleges in which students enroll.
- October 17, 2012
Online Ph.D. Program.org made the Top 100 Sites by and for Master’s and PhD Candidates to showcase the academic challenges and successes of Master's and PhD candidates who have decided to share their stories online, in the hopes that future students in these fields will take inspiration from the work of those that came before them.
College Puzzle Blog by Michael Kirst is dedicated to help students succeed through higher education. Blog topics cover areas such as: how to prepare students for higher education, how online education can be beneficial for certain students, and more. It’s chosen as one of the Top 100 Sites by and for Master’s and PhD Candidates
- October 13, 2012
THE HAMPTONS, A string of small towns on the south shore of Long Island, have long been a playground for America’s affluent. Nowadays the merely rich are being crimped by the ultra-wealthy. In August it can cost $400,000 to rent a fancy house there. The din of helicopters and private jets is omnipresent. The “Quiet Skies Coalition”, formed by a group of angry residents, protests against the noise, particularly of one billionaire’s military-size Chinook. “You can’t even play tennis,” moans an old-timer who stays near the East Hampton airport. “It’s like the third world war with GIV and GV jets.”
- September 20, 2012
Congratulations to Ken Shores for receiving the PACS PhD Fellowship. Ken is a doctoral candidate in the Administration and Policy Analysis program at Stanford University. He received his B.S. in Economics from the University of Rhode Island in 2003. Prior to coming to Stanford, he was a teacher for five years in Pueblo Pintado, a small Navajo community in the northwest region of New Mexico. He also taught for two years in Quito, Ecuador. Ken studies patterns and trends of educational inequality and the political tools at our disposal for addressing these inequalities. His current work investigates the effects of court-ordered school finance reform.
- September 20, 2012
Congratulations to Agustina Paglayan for receiving the Graduate Public Service Fellowship. Agustina is a doctoral student at Stanford University, where she is pursuing a self-designed program in the Political Economy of Education, a master’s degree in Political Science, and the Stanford Interdisciplinary Doctoral Training Program in Quantitative Education Policy Analysis. Agustina studies how governance and political economy issues affect which education policies are adopted and whether they succeed in improving the quality of education systems.
- August 28, 2012
It’s a well-established fact that the rich are growing richer and the poor are growing poorer, and that there are fewer and fewer people in between. What’s not so well known is how that income gap may be translating into disparities in educational success––and what that might mean for the long-term future of individuals, economically challenged groups, and our entire nation.
A recently published study by Professor Sean Reardon is sounding alarm bells. Reardon has found that the gap in test scores between the highest and lowest-income students has grown by about 40 percent since the 1960s and is now nearly twice as large as the black-white achievement gap.
- August 21, 2012
When a Stanford University scholar displayed the first slide in his presentation on college football and university status systems, an audience member who was a loyal Cardinal fan challenged him. Why, she asked, would a Stanford professor lead off with a slide showing the football stadium of the University of California at Berkeley?
The comment was a joke. But it was a perfect illustration of one part of the paper presented here at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association -- namely, that in the United States, a major part of the identity of American colleges and universities is linked to athletics and, specifically, to football. But the paper argues that traditional explanations for why American universities are so football-obsessed are wrong. Further, the paper offers evidence that universities that join top athletic conferences not only improve their sports programs, but may see academic improvements as a result.
- August 08, 2012
- August 01, 2012
The U.S. educational system needs top-to-bottom rehabilitation. The nation’s long-term economic growth depends on it. And the strength of that growth — remember, we’re aiming for 4% annually — is directly related to the quality of our schools, according to Eric A. Hanushek, a fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University.
- July 31, 2012
When it comes to educational performance, and socioeconomic mobility in general, these income and gender pay disparities matter. The capacity to spend if not the actual dollars spent on a child's education is linked to his or her educational success. Earlier this year the New York Times reported on a study by Stanford scholar Sean F. Reardon demonstrating that income is tightly related to academic performance. Reardon's study looks in depth at the correlation between income and standardized test performance, finding that that between 1960 and 2007, the gap in standardized test scores between affluent and low-income students had grown by nearly 40 percent.
- July 27, 2012
- July 23, 2012
When asked to propose ways to deal with budget cuts, the National Park Service famously proposed closing the Washington Monument, and this tactic of choosing the most egregious conceivable action as a way of forestalling budget cuts is enshrined in budgeting lore.
- July 18, 2012
The importance of economic growth for the economic well-being of countries is well-recognized throughout Latin America, but the long term history of development in the region has been almost uniformly disappointing. Moreover, while the causes of this lagging growth have been the subject of dispute with various economists pointing to such factors as political instability, international trade policy, monetary instability, and the like, recent analysis by Ludger Woessmann and me suggests a very straightforward explanation.
- July 17, 2012
Black and Hispanic students remain significantly underrepresented in the most selective colleges, according to a new report.
The study, released by Stanford University's Center for Education Policy Analysis, analyzed race, income and enrollment patterns at top-tier universities from 1982 to 2004.
- July 16, 2012
“The United States’ failure to educate its students leaves them unprepared to compete and threatens the country’s ability to thrive in a global economy.” Such was the dire warning issued recently by an education task force sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations. Chaired by former New York City schools chancellor Joel I. Klein and former U.S.
- July 02, 2012
President Barak Obama nominated Susanna Loeb, the Barnett Family Professor of Education at Stanford University, to be a Member of the Board of Directors of the National Board for Education Sciences on March 16, 2012. The Senate confirmed Professor Loeb’s appointment on June 29, 2012 for a four year term expiring March 15, 2016.