{"id":1309,"date":"2011-11-06T11:40:01","date_gmt":"2011-11-06T16:40:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/11\/tracking-can-help-all-distributions-of-students-new-research.html"},"modified":"2011-11-06T11:40:01","modified_gmt":"2011-11-06T16:40:01","slug":"tracking-can-help-all-distributions-of-students-new-research","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/11\/tracking-can-help-all-distributions-of-students-new-research.html","title":{"rendered":"Tracking can help all distributions of students —new research"},"content":{"rendered":"

It turns out tracking students can help all students if done properly.
\nCUEE’s
\n
\ninvited speaker Terry Jenkins<\/a>
\nco-authored a paper
\nback in 1997 about
\nDetracking Troup County: Providing an Exemplary Curriculum for All Students.<\/a>
\nHe appeared to be saying de-tracking was an advantge of school consolidation.
\nBack then tracking was apparently considered a bad thing.
\nRecent research shows that actually tracking students can help all
\nlevels of students.
\nSo yet another supposed reason or benefit of consolidation turns out
\nnot to be true.<\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/a>
\nEsther Duflo, Pascaline Dupas, and Michael Kremer wrote for American Economic Review, 101(5): 1739\u201374, DOI:10.1257\/aer.101.5.1739,
\n
\nPeer Effects, Teacher Incentives, and the Impact of Tracking: Evidence from a Randomized Evaluation in Kenya<\/a><\/p>\n

\nTo the extent that students benefit from high-achieving peers, tracking
\nwill help strong students and hurt weak ones. However, all students may
\nbenefit if tracking allows teachers to better tailor their instruction
\nlevel. Lower-achieving pupils are particularly likely to benefit from
\ntracking when teachers have incentives to teach to the top of the
\ndistribution. We propose a simple model nesting these effects and test
\nits implications in a randomized tracking experiment conducted with
\n121 primary schools in Kenya. While the direct effect of high-achieving
\npeers is positive, tracking benefited lower-achieving pupils indirectly
\nby allowing teachers to teach to their level. (JEL I21, J45, O15)\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The first sentence is the standard “diversity” argument that CUEE
\nkeeps making.
\nThe authors state it so as to poing out that their study finds
\nthat it’s far from the whole story.<\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/a><\/p>\n

\nI find this part especially interesting:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\nLower-achieving pupils are particularly likely to benefit from
\ntracking when teachers have incentives to teach to the top of the
\ndistribution.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That appears to mean that teachers don’t even need direct incentives
\nto teach to the rest of the distribution; merely focusing on one
\npart of the distribution also frees teachers to to focus on other
\nparts of the distribution.
\nAnd then imagine what if teachers also had incentives to focus
\non the lower-achieving pupils?<\/p>\n

\nHere’s a
\n
\nslightly earlier version of the paper<\/a>
\nthat doesn’t require signing up to get it.<\/p>\n

\nIt appears to me that the Chamber and CUEE have
\n
\nno arguments left for school consolidation.<\/a>
\nI agree with FVCS and Nimrod and both school systems and the Valdosta City Council
\nthat consolidation is a bad idea and registered voters in Valdosta
\nshould vote No to school consolidation Tuesday November 8th<\/sup><\/small>.<\/p>\n

\nI also like
\n
\nJim Parker’s idea:<\/a><\/p>\n

\nHow about as a first step the Chamber pledge an equivalent amount of
\nmoney it and its members have spent on CUEE to the Boards of Education
\nyearly, to be used as the teachers see fit?\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

They could spend it on incentives for teachers to address all
\ndistributions of students.<\/p>\n

\n-jsq<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It turns out tracking students can help all students if done properly. CUEE’s invited speaker Terry Jenkins co-authored a paper back in 1997 about Detracking Troup County: Providing an Exemplary Curriculum for All Students. He appeared to be saying de-tracking was an advantge of school consolidation. Back then tracking was apparently considered a bad thing. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[97,40,1376,14,15,49,3305,3452,289,332],"tags":[3480,1636,8829,3483,8705,3477,1945,8869,8701,7,3482,3481,3478,2877,1837,3479,3476,1635,6],"class_list":["post-1309","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-activism","category-community","category-cuee","category-economy","category-education","category-elections","category-fvcs","category-nimrod","category-science","category-vlcoc","tag-and-the-impact-of-tracking","tag-consolidation","tag-cuee","tag-doi10-1257aer-101-5-1739","tag-education","tag-endline-score-by-initial-attainment","tag-esther-duflo","tag-fvcs","tag-georgia","tag-lowndes-county","tag-michael-kremer-american-economic-review","tag-pascaline-dupas","tag-peer-effects","tag-school","tag-students","tag-teacher-incentives","tag-tracking","tag-unification","tag-valdosta"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1309","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1309"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1309\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}