7 ms·

Statistical studies have long shown that (1) education outcomes strongly correlate with parenting; especially having two parents. (2) education outcomes have ne

by cjensen 12y ago

Statistical studies have long shown that (1) education outcomes strongly correlate with parenting; especially having two parents. (2) education outcomes have near-zero correlation with funding. Given this, one would expect this exact outcome. Santayana and all that. If you want to use money to improve education, I suspect the best use would be to provide parental education as soon as the child is born. It would be nice if someone provided a small amount of money to try that out.

ncallaway 12y ago
I'm currently in the process of investigating the literature on correlations between teacher pay and student outcomes. Would you mind listing some studies showing point (2). I'd really appreciate anything you've got handy.
- aaronharnly 12y ago
  I don't agree with their proposed remedies, but the book "Schoolhouses, Courthouses, and Statehouses" by Eric Hanushek and Alfred Lindseth has thorough documentation of the disconnect between spending and outcomes. http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0691130000 http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0691130000
jseliger 12y ago
I don't mean to be that jerk, but I'm going to anyway: citations are needed on this: "Statistical studies have long shown that..." "We"—schools, society, etc.—can't really control parenting. But we can control schools, and per the articles I list here: http://jseliger.wordpress.com/2009/11/12/susan-engel-doesnt-get-2/ http://jseliger.wordpress.com/2009/11/12/susan-engel-doesnt-... , it is probably possible to get substantially better outcomes than the ones we're getting now, chiefly through better teachers. At the moment, most public school teachers are paid in lockstep based on seniority—CS teachers and PE teachers get the same pay—and can't be fired after their second or third year of teaching, and that creates a lot of perverse incentives.
- gfodor 12y ago
  ""We"—schools, society, etc.—can't really control parenting." Sounds like you need a citation of your own. I'm sure you could come up with hundreds of ways to apply money towards the solution of improving parenting.
  - jseliger 12y ago
    See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7739746 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7739746 .
- cjensen 12y ago
  See aaronharnly's comment for a book full of cites https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7739206 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7739206
  - jseliger 12y ago
    Hanushek is an advocate for some kind of charter reform, per his Econtalk talk: http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2008/07/hanushek_on_edu_2.html http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2008/07/hanushek_on_edu_2.h... . I think he would loosely agree with my above points.
- ceras 12y ago
  > "We"—schools, society, etc.—can't really control parenting. Programs exist for this with some positive results. Here's one from a quick Google search: http://evidencebasedprograms.org/1366-2/nurse-family-partnership http://evidencebasedprograms.org/1366-2/nurse-family-partner...
  - jseliger 12y ago
    There are innumerable small-scale programs that show limited positive results, but almost none of them scale up (see http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2007/11/scale-matters/2243/ http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2007/11/scale-ma... for more on that general problem; her book The Upside of Down is also good on this subject). Lots of small-scale Head Start programs show promise too, but the program's effects on the whole fade out after a couple years, and on a large scale it hasn't done anything except provide daycare and jobs. Programs like "Nurse-Family Partnership – Top Tier" already operate. I know because I've written numerous Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) Healthy Start Initiative (HSI) proposals (see more about the program here: http://blog.seliger.com/2013/12/15/hrsas-healthy-start-initiative-inadvertently-illuminates-how-grant-funding-decisions-are-actually-made/ http://blog.seliger.com/2013/12/15/hrsas-healthy-start-initi...) that attempt to do just this. I do grant writing for nonprofit and public agencies, so I see citations like yours all the time. Next time I write an HSI or similar program, I'll cite "Nurse-Family Partnership – Top Tier." Doing so isn't going to make the program any better, because HSI has been operating for a couple decades, under different names, and hasn't accomplished much on a large scale, in part because of the scale-up problems described in the first paragraph. Ideas like "Nurse-Family Partnership – Top Tier" sound good, but the gap between the real world and the proposal world is quite wide (http://blog.seliger.com/2010/04/11/the-real-world-and-the-proposal-world/ http://blog.seliger.com/2010/04/11/the-real-world-and-the-pr...). Zuckerberg has evidently learned this. Apologies for the length of this post, but the issue is a complex one that is hard to explain and harder to understand—hence all the links!
danielweber 12y ago
It's really really hard to figure out which correlations mean something. If the New York Times says tomorrow that wearing knit caps during pregnancy makes your baby smarter, then all the high-conscientious women who are high-income to be in the NYT's readership will wear knit caps. 20 years later when you measure, sure enough, there is a correlation between knit caps in pregnancy and educational outcomes! You have to work hard to correct for all these effects. For example, is there a difference between : single mom because mom never married; single mom because parents divorced; single mom because dad died on a business trip?
- gfodor 12y ago
  It's easier to figure out if correlations mean something if they make intuitive sense. We're not talking about knit caps, we're talking about the notion that kids are more likely to be successful if they have two parents raising them instead of one, all other things being equal. This is borderline common sense, just like it is also borderline common sense to suppose that kids having parents who are uneducated drug addicts are less likely to succeed than those who have successful educated parents.
  - danielweber 12y ago
    The knit cap is simply to point out the ridiculousness of the problem. Breast-feeding is a common issue where there is the "intuitive sense" but it's really a "just-so story." There's "well, it's just common sense" theories that turned out to be useless when studied by smart people that weren't blinded by "well of course we will find some effect from this" bias. Seriously, compare the life outcomes of single-parent households by breaking out the reasons for single-parenthood. http://www.clasp.org/resources-and-publications/states/0086.pdf http://www.clasp.org/resources-and-publications/states/0086.... There is a lot more going on than "no dad -> sucky results." Zuck needs to figure out what the real causes are before pouring another $100,000,000 down the drain.
- cjensen 12y ago
  All good points; which is why I was careful to call it correlation instead of causation. For example, distance from the Canadian border is also well-known to correlate with education outcomes (with larger distances correlating with worse outcomes). That said, by far the strongest correlation is with dual parents. I don't know if anyone has studied the details you ask for, but it does stand to reason that a single parent -- of either sex and regardless of cause -- has a much tougher life and therefore less time to spend one on one with their child.

by cjensen 12y ago

ncallaway 12y ago

I'm currently in the process of investigating the literature on correlations between teacher pay and student outcomes. Would you mind listing some studies showing point (2). I'd really appreciate anything you've got handy.

aaronharnly 12y ago
I don't agree with their proposed remedies, but the book "Schoolhouses, Courthouses, and Statehouses" by Eric Hanushek and Alfred Lindseth has thorough documentation of the disconnect between spending and outcomes. http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0691130000 http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0691130000

jseliger 12y ago

I don't mean to be that jerk, but I'm going to anyway: citations are needed on this: "Statistical studies have long shown that..." "We"—schools, society, etc.—can't really control parenting. But we can control schools, and per the articles I list here: http://jseliger.wordpress.com/2009/11/12/susan-engel-doesnt-get-2/ http://jseliger.wordpress.com/2009/11/12/susan-engel-doesnt-... , it is probably possible to get substantially better outcomes than the ones we're getting now, chiefly through better teachers. At the moment, most public school teachers are paid in lockstep based on seniority—CS teachers and PE teachers get the same pay—and can't be fired after their second or third year of teaching, and that creates a lot of perverse incentives.

gfodor 12y ago
""We"—schools, society, etc.—can't really control parenting." Sounds like you need a citation of your own. I'm sure you could come up with hundreds of ways to apply money towards the solution of improving parenting.
- jseliger 12y ago
  See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7739746 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7739746 .
cjensen 12y ago
See aaronharnly's comment for a book full of cites https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7739206 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7739206
- jseliger 12y ago
  Hanushek is an advocate for some kind of charter reform, per his Econtalk talk: http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2008/07/hanushek_on_edu_2.html http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2008/07/hanushek_on_edu_2.h... . I think he would loosely agree with my above points.
ceras 12y ago
> "We"—schools, society, etc.—can't really control parenting. Programs exist for this with some positive results. Here's one from a quick Google search: http://evidencebasedprograms.org/1366-2/nurse-family-partnership http://evidencebasedprograms.org/1366-2/nurse-family-partner...
- jseliger 12y ago
  There are innumerable small-scale programs that show limited positive results, but almost none of them scale up (see http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2007/11/scale-matters/2243/ http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2007/11/scale-ma... for more on that general problem; her book The Upside of Down is also good on this subject). Lots of small-scale Head Start programs show promise too, but the program's effects on the whole fade out after a couple years, and on a large scale it hasn't done anything except provide daycare and jobs. Programs like "Nurse-Family Partnership – Top Tier" already operate. I know because I've written numerous Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) Healthy Start Initiative (HSI) proposals (see more about the program here: http://blog.seliger.com/2013/12/15/hrsas-healthy-start-initiative-inadvertently-illuminates-how-grant-funding-decisions-are-actually-made/ http://blog.seliger.com/2013/12/15/hrsas-healthy-start-initi...) that attempt to do just this. I do grant writing for nonprofit and public agencies, so I see citations like yours all the time. Next time I write an HSI or similar program, I'll cite "Nurse-Family Partnership – Top Tier." Doing so isn't going to make the program any better, because HSI has been operating for a couple decades, under different names, and hasn't accomplished much on a large scale, in part because of the scale-up problems described in the first paragraph. Ideas like "Nurse-Family Partnership – Top Tier" sound good, but the gap between the real world and the proposal world is quite wide (http://blog.seliger.com/2010/04/11/the-real-world-and-the-proposal-world/ http://blog.seliger.com/2010/04/11/the-real-world-and-the-pr...). Zuckerberg has evidently learned this. Apologies for the length of this post, but the issue is a complex one that is hard to explain and harder to understand—hence all the links!

danielweber 12y ago

It's really really hard to figure out which correlations mean something. If the New York Times says tomorrow that wearing knit caps during pregnancy makes your baby smarter, then all the high-conscientious women who are high-income to be in the NYT's readership will wear knit caps. 20 years later when you measure, sure enough, there is a correlation between knit caps in pregnancy and educational outcomes! You have to work hard to correct for all these effects. For example, is there a difference between : single mom because mom never married; single mom because parents divorced; single mom because dad died on a business trip?

gfodor 12y ago
It's easier to figure out if correlations mean something if they make intuitive sense. We're not talking about knit caps, we're talking about the notion that kids are more likely to be successful if they have two parents raising them instead of one, all other things being equal. This is borderline common sense, just like it is also borderline common sense to suppose that kids having parents who are uneducated drug addicts are less likely to succeed than those who have successful educated parents.
- danielweber 12y ago
  The knit cap is simply to point out the ridiculousness of the problem. Breast-feeding is a common issue where there is the "intuitive sense" but it's really a "just-so story." There's "well, it's just common sense" theories that turned out to be useless when studied by smart people that weren't blinded by "well of course we will find some effect from this" bias. Seriously, compare the life outcomes of single-parent households by breaking out the reasons for single-parenthood. http://www.clasp.org/resources-and-publications/states/0086.pdf http://www.clasp.org/resources-and-publications/states/0086.... There is a lot more going on than "no dad -> sucky results." Zuck needs to figure out what the real causes are before pouring another $100,000,000 down the drain.
cjensen 12y ago
All good points; which is why I was careful to call it correlation instead of causation. For example, distance from the Canadian border is also well-known to correlate with education outcomes (with larger distances correlating with worse outcomes). That said, by far the strongest correlation is with dual parents. I don't know if anyone has studied the details you ask for, but it does stand to reason that a single parent -- of either sex and regardless of cause -- has a much tougher life and therefore less time to spend one on one with their child.