School league tables for Ireland?

There has been very little about education in the election campaign. This story suggests that Fine Gael plan to publish school league tables if they are in government.

Opinions of the Irish Public on the Availability of Information About Schools

This is a topic that Kevin has commented on before (the availability of information, not the opinions). He has mentioned that "when league tables are discussed in an education context it usually refers to comparisons of schools based on exam results... but such tables (real ones) would at least refer to outputs and could, with a little work, be made into a Value Added measure." Why keep parents in the dark about one of the most important decisions they will ever make?

The abstract below (also available as the third item on this link) is from a research paper from the ERC in Drumcondra, co-authored by Geary fellow Michael Daly (Irish Journal of Education: Vol. 38, 2010). It elicits the opinions of the Irish public on the availability of information about schools. The research finds substantial variation in views to be associated with socioeconomic status, "due mainly to the deviation of respondents categorized as farmers, both in their satisfaction with the current situation and in their agreement with the need to provide more information."

OPINIONS OF THE IRISH PUBLIC ON THE AVAILABILITY OF INFORMATION ABOUT SCHOOLS
Thomas Kellaghan and Michael Daly
Educational Research Centre,St Patrick’s College, Dublin

In a survey of a representative sample of the Irish adult population (aged 15+ years) (n=1,511), respondents categorized by gender, age, socioeconomic level, school-leaving standard, and whether or not they had children in the education system, were asked in interview their views about the adequacy of information that schools provide to parents about how well their children are doing and about the school’s performance in general. They were then asked if they agreed with a series of statements relating to making information about schools available in the following forms: an annual report on a school’s performance, inspectors’ evaluation reports, rates of absenteeism, dropout rates, literacy and numeracy achievements of students (primary schools), public examination results (secondary schools), number of students who go to third-level education (secondary schools), and students’ improvement in achievement while in school (secondary schools). All categories of respondent exhibited differences in the percentage agreeing with some statements. The greatest variation in views was associated with the socioeconomic status of respondents, due mainly to the deviation of respondents categorized as farmers, both in their satisfaction with the current situation and in their agreement with the need to provide more information. Respondents who were still in the education system (and respondents in the youngest age category) indicated the greatest satisfaction with the information currently available and were less likely to agree that there was need for a greater amount of information.

OECD Report: Education at a glance- or in a fog?

The Irish Times today covered the publication of the latest OECD Education at a Glance and some of the domestic response to it. Like most OECD publications, this series provides lots of useful statistics and information generally to a fairly high standard.
I haven't read the actual report but two things struck me from the coverage. In the first article it says " The report shows that on average across OECD countries, a man with third-level qualifications will generate $119,000 (€93.386) more in income taxes and social contributions over his working life than someone with just an upper secondary level of education. It says that even after taking account of the cost to the public exchequer of financing degree courses, higher tax revenues and social contributions from people with university degrees make third-level education a good long-term investment."
Assuming they are being quoted correctly, this is a bad mistake by the OECD. If you want to do a Cost-Benefit analysis of investment in education then you need to measure the extra output generated which is proxied by the extra income and not the additional tax revenue generated. The latter is a transfer from one group to another so its irrelevant. In a country with high marginal income taxes the extra tax yield from additional education is higher but obviously this doesn't mean that education is a "better investment" in such countries. Unfortunately this fallacy is quite common though I am surprised to see it apparently emanating from the OECD. The OECD argument would only make sense if the purpose of public policy was to minimize net public outlays on education. In which case, one should simply close the sector down or privatise it.
The second point that struck me is the concentration in the commentary on education expenditure & Ireland's low ranking by this criterion (as a share of GDP). This data is openly referred to as "league tables" and various people in the education sector as well as opposition politicans, quoted in the second article, are content to moan about it.
Now when league tables are discussed in an education context it usually refers to comparisons of schools based on exam results. Cue educationalists and teachers unions saying "Oh no crude league tables, don't take into account blah blah... so we can't have that". Far better to keep parents in the dark about one of the most important decisions they will ever make: its for their own benefit. But such tables would at least refer to outputs and could, with a little work, be made into a Value Added measure. However these OECD numbers just released are measures of one input as a share of another variable that take nothing into account. What does it mean that Ireland spends less on education, as a % of GDP, than say Belgium? Absolutely nothing. So it seems to me that it is completely inconsistent, not to say self-serving, to decry one set of crude comparisons but endorse another totally meaningless set.

School accountability: good or bad?

How do we get good schools? How do we get the best out of our schools? Questions like this have interested policy makers, researchers, and indeed parents for years in many countries. Accountability is one of the keywords that has emerged. We need to hold schools accountable. We hold this truth to be self evident. The idea is central in the No Child Left Behind act in the US.
But how? Well for a start one needs to measure school's peformance and compare them against benchmarks. At the very least, this means publishing measures of schools' academic outcomes, "league table" to you and me. This is done in many countries 'though not in Ireland where it is against the law.
But its not that simple. While it might be legitimate to measure the value-added by a school, simple measures of output will not measure that since the inputs (like the students) will differ. If we reward schools with high output then they have an incentive to engage in cream-skimming: exclude special-needs students, non-nationals and anyone else who might lower one's scores. Even with the information vacuum in Ireland, this occurs through various, not to say rather devious, means. The paper below addresses this important question head-on.

School accountability: (how) can we reward schools and avoid cream-skimming?

Erwin OOGHE, Erik SCHOKKAERT
Introducing school accountability may create incentives for efficiency. However, if the performance measure used does not correct for pupil characteristics, it will lead to an inequitable treatment of schools and create perverse incentives for cream-skimming. We apply the theory of fair allocation to show how to integrate empirical information about the educational production function in a coherent theoretical framework. The requirements of rewarding performance and correcting for pupil characteristics are incompatible if we want the funding scheme to be applicable for all educational production functions. However, we characterize an attractive subsidy scheme under specific restrictions on the educational production function. This subsidy scheme uses only information which can be controlled easily by the regulator. We show with Flemish data how the proposed funding scheme can be implemented.
http://www.econ.kuleuven.be/eng/ew/discussionpapers/Dps09/Dps0922.pdf

An obsession with league tables in higher education?

The use of "league tables" in comparing higher education institutions has become more prominent in recent years. This article links to an OECD study (by Ellen Hazelkorn of DIT) which surveys this trend and how institutions have responded to it.

http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=20071108145803689