Tag Archives: Education

Guest Post by Jeff Mosenkis of Innovations for Poverty Action. Alex Tabarrok summarizes the story from the new book on RCTs, Randomistas, about how TOMS shoes invited an external evaluation of their program giving away shoes and discovered it wasn’t helping recipients very much. This isn’t that unusual in development, but faced with the evidence, they agreed to be named in the paper and be public about it, and tried to figure out how to use the insights to do better. (See study author Bruce...

One of the ways in which the neoliberal era has entrenched itself and, in this case, will perpetuate its negative legacy for years to come is to infiltrate the educational system. This has occurred in various ways over the decades as the corporate sector has sought to have more influence over what is taught and researched in universities. The benefits of this influence to capital are obvious. They create a stream of compliant recruits who have learned to jump through hoops to get delayed...

Posted by Nick Falvo under aboriginal peoples, Alberta, budgets, Child Care, education, fiscal policy, homeless, housing, HST, income, income support, income tax, Indigenous people, inequality, labour market, macroeconomics, NDP, poverty, progressive economic strategies, public infrastructure, public sector procurement, public services, seniors, small business, social policy, student debt, taxation, user fees, women, workplace benefits. March 21st, 2018Comments: none The...

Yesterday I spoke on a panel discussion on economic inequality, along with Andrew Jackson and Armine Yalnizyan. We were guests at the federal NDP’s policy convention in Ottawa. The panel was moderated by Guy Caron. Topics covered included the minimum wage, basic income, affordable housing, the future of jobs, gender budgeting, poverty among seniors, Canadian fiscal policy in historical perspective, and Canadian fiscal policy in comparison with other OECD countries. The discussion was 30...

So Toby Young was eventually hounded into resigning from the board of the Office for Students. I confess, I was one of those who hounded him. I thought, and still think, that his appointment was wholly inappropriate. I was not sorry to see Jo Johnson subsequently moved out of the Department for Education, either, though personally I would have sacked him. Johnson, who was instrumental in bringing about Young's appointment, defended it to the House of Commons on the extraordinary grounds...

China coming on strong. It still has a way to go though.The Unz ReviewChinese Science Anatoly Karlin

Eugenics has a bad reputation. Even the word "eugenics" is repugnant to many people, associated as it is with atrocities - forced sterilization programmes in America, for example, and of course the horrors of Nazi Germany. We like to see eugenics as discredited pseudo-science that has been consigned to the dust of history. Never again will we treat people as expendable simply because of their inherited characteristics. But ideas that we discard because of their horrible consequences have...

The history of the board game. JSTOR Daily The Different Meanings of MonopolyLivia Gershon

Guest post by Jeff Mosenkis of Innovations for Poverty Action. (Research team in Sierra Leone, photo credit: Jeff Steinberg) Please support the poverty researchers who really work amazingly hard (I can promise you HQ is not spending it on reliable copiers). Poverty-action.org/donate. Some nice news this week, the MacArthur Foundation awarded its big “100&Change” 100 million dollar big idea award to the International Rescue Committee and Sesame Workshop. They’ll use it to implement an...

Guest post by Jeff Mosenkis of Innovations for Poverty Action. (Research team in Sierra Leone, photo credit: Jeff Steinberg) Please support the poverty researchers who really work amazingly hard (I can promise you HQ is not spending it on reliable copiers). Poverty-action.org/donate. Some nice news this week, the MacArthur Foundation awarded its big “100&Change” 100 million dollar big idea award to the International Rescue Committee and Sesame Workshop. They’ll use it to...