IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cca/wpaper/143.html

Measurement Matters: Perspectives on Education Policy from an Economist and School Board Member

Author

Listed:
  • Kevin Lang

Abstract

From the perspective of someone who is both an economist and a former school board member, this paper assesses the use of test-score data by policy-makers and academic researchers. The absence of interval scales often makes the interpretation of test-scores and the indicators derived from them highly problematic. Economists have both been deficient in alerting policy-makers to the inherent difficulties in using such data and cavalier in their own treatment of them. Test score data often merely confirm what administrators already know. Nevertheless they can be useful if used as a trigger for further investigation, and, in particular, as a lever for encouraging principals and other administrators to act on information about teacher (or school) quality.

Suggested Citation

  • Kevin Lang, 2010. "Measurement Matters: Perspectives on Education Policy from an Economist and School Board Member," Carlo Alberto Notebooks 143, Collegio Carlo Alberto.
    • Handle: RePEc:cca:wpaper:143
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.carloalberto.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/no.143.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Elizabeth U. Cascio & Douglas O. Staiger, 2012. "Knowledge, Tests, and Fadeout in Educational Interventions," NBER Working Papers 18038, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Schwerdt, Guido & West, Martin R. & Winters, Marcus A., 2017. "The effects of test-based retention on student outcomes over time: Regression discontinuity evidence from Florida," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 152(C), pages 154-169.
    3. Dickerson, Andy & Ratcliffe, Anita & Rohenkohl, Bertha & Van de Sijpe, Nicolas, 2024. "Anticipated labour market discrimination and educational achievement," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 222(C), pages 375-393.
    4. Jeffrey R. Bloem & Andrew J. Oswald, 2022. "The Analysis of Human Feelings: A Practical Suggestion for a Robustness Test," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 68(3), pages 689-710, September.
    5. Diego Azqueta Oyarzun & Guillermina Gavaldon, 2014. "The economic assessment of education: Social Efficiency or Social Reconstruction?," Investigaciones de Economía de la Educación volume 9, in: Adela García Aracil & Isabel Neira Gómez (ed.), Investigaciones de Economía de la Educación 9, edition 1, volume 9, chapter 51, pages 969-978, Asociación de Economía de la Educación.
    6. Nirav Mehta, 2019. "Measuring quality for use in incentive schemes: The case of “shrinkage” estimators," Quantitative Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 10(4), pages 1537-1577, November.
    7. Forbes Silke & Gordon Nora, 2012. "When Educators Are the Learners: Private Contracting by Public Schools," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 12(1), pages 1-29, July.
    8. Mariesa A. Herrmann & Jonah E. Rockoff, 2012. "Worker Absence and Productivity: Evidence from Teaching," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 30(4), pages 749-782.
    9. Daniel M. Bolt & Xiangyi Liao, 2022. "Item Complexity: A Neglected Psychometric Feature of Test Items?," Psychometrika, Springer;The Psychometric Society, vol. 87(4), pages 1195-1213, December.
    10. Wan, Sirui & Bond, Timothy N. & Lang, Kevin & Clements, Douglas H. & Sarama, Julie & Bailey, Drew H., 2021. "Is intervention fadeout a scaling artefact?," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 82(C).
    11. Joshua B. Gilbert & Zachary Himmelsbach & James Soland & Mridul Joshi & Benjamin W. Domingue, 2024. "Estimating Heterogeneous Treatment Effects with Item-Level Outcome Data: Insights from Item Response Theory," Papers 2405.00161, arXiv.org, revised Jan 2025.
    12. Sonia Bhalotra & Martin Karlsson & Therese Nilsson & Nina Schwarz, 2022. "Infant Health, Cognitive Performance, and Earnings: Evidence from Inception of the Welfare State in Sweden," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 104(6), pages 1138-1156, November.
    13. Timothy N. Bond & Kevin Lang, 2013. "The Evolution of the Black-White Test Score Gap in Grades K–3: The Fragility of Results," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 95(5), pages 1468-1479, December.
    14. Carsten Schroeder & Shlomo Yitzhaki, 2020. "Exploring the robustness of country rankings by educational attainment," Journal of Economics, Springer, vol. 129(3), pages 271-296, April.
    15. Eric R. Nielsen, 2015. "Achievement Gap Estimates and Deviations from Cardinal Comparability," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2015-40, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    16. Eric R. Nielsen, 2015. "The Income-Achievement Gap and Adult Outcome Inequality," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2015-41, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • I21 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Analysis of Education
    • I28 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Government Policy
    • H75 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations - - - State and Local Government: Health, Education, and Welfare

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cca:wpaper:143. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Giovanni Bert (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/fccaait.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.