Memo to Hanushek: 0.08 SD is very small
Hanushek, an economist, claims that the .08 standard deviation increase in student learning is not as insignificant as the report makes it sound. According to his calculations, the benefits of such gains outweigh the costs: that amount of learning, he claims, translates to a value of $14 trillion. He notes that if testing is expanded at the expense of $100 per student, the rate of return on that investment is 9,189 percent.
1. Hanushek claiming others' research conclusions are biased is a case of the pot calling the kettle black.
2. See http://goo.gl/OB8Jw for how to interpret standard deviation sizes
4 comments
Nov 27, 2011
Patrick Larkin liked this post.
Nov 27, 2011
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Nov 28, 2011
Andrew said...
Whether .08 SD is big or small is beside the point. His claim that test-based instruction is valuable comes down to a cost benefit analysis, where he says that the "value" of that amount of learning is 14 trillion dollars. Huh? He's trying to take this study and correlate it to improvements in GDP. There are two obvious problems. First, his numerical analysis is probably wrong in that is assumes that one can impute test scores as a causative factor for GDP increase. More importantly, the implied assumption that school should be about economics, and specifically GDP, is pretty disturbing.
Nov 28, 2011
Patrick Larkin said...
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