Monday, September 28, 2015

We Know How to Do This

C. Kirabo Jackson, Rucker C. Johnson and Claudia Persico:

Our analyses also reveal sizable effects of increased school spending on low-income children’s labor market outcomes and their economic status as adults. For children from low-income families, increasing per-pupil spending by 10 percent in all 12 school-age years boosts adult hourly wages by $2.07 in 2000 dollars, or 13 percent (see Figure 4).

So... according to Chetty et al, we could get the same increase by giving low income kids essentially all high-performing teachers throughout their 13 years of school -- which we totally do not know how to do, or by increasing spending 10%, which we absolutely know how to do.

Of course, the strategy is to go with the approach we don't know how to do, and which is probably impossible.

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