Comments on: Ross Gittins, me and the future of economics – some stray thoughts

By: Club Troppo » Missing Link Daily

Club Troppo » Missing Link Daily — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 22:23:56 +0000

[...] Gruen seems to be advocating actual real world experimentation in policy. It’s all grown up now, ready to be a [...]

By: Nicholas Gruen

Nicholas Gruen — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 10:31:13 +0000

Yes, I should have mentioned the International Baccalaureate.

By: D. W. Griffiths

D. W. Griffiths — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 10:20:21 +0000

This argument for competing systems is very much in line with Jonathan Pincus's paper for CEDA on federal-state financial relations, which stresses the important of state-vs-state and federal-vs-states competion. Gittins has written about the Pincus paper recently too.

By: conrad

conrad — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 20:15:37 +0000

I agree with Jc, although I’ll also note an additional problem in that what schools use is really likely to end up like Beta vs. VHS in a negative way in that what they pick is going to be largely influenced by teacher availiable (and teacher ability for that matter) and other such factors, rather than what might be the best for kids given limitless resources. This is easy to see from the IB — its surely better than the political slop designed to hit the lowest common demoninator which afflicts some states, but it still isn’t widely taught.

By: Jacques Chester

Jacques Chester — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 12:55:27 +0000

chools might offer to teach the national curriculum with specific regard to the interstate mobility of the families whose kids it teaches.

An even more portable standard exists in the International Baccalaureate. I graduated from a so-so highschool, but the IB I got through them was worth its weight in gold. A smart state might consider ditching the shinybums and culture warriors in their own Education department in favour of the IB. It had a number of advantages over the local certificate, quite aside from prestige: * Extremely detailed syllabi available to students; * Very detailed and meaningful assessment system which gave excellent feedback; * Assessments counting towards final scores were assessed anonymously by teachers and professors in the Northern hemisphere (and vice versa for Northern hemispheric students). The primary and middle school curriculum is wishy-washy but the Year 11 and 12 stuff (the Diploma) was solid and put me in a very good position when I went to apply to universities.