Salary Schedules, Teacher Sorting, and Teacher Quality

This study investigates how salary rigidities affect teacher quality across teaching subjects and high schools and whether high quality teachers can be compensated sufficiently to attract them into unfavorable schools. For identification, we rely on idiosyncratic variations in compensation across adjacent districts within the same state. The results indicate that, on average, math/science teachers’ scholastic aptitudes are 8.5 percentiles lower and humanities teachers are 4.5 percentiles lower compared to other teachers. Furthermore, we find that schools with higher percentages of student eligible for free lunch hire teachers with, on average, 7 to 17 percentiles lower scholastic aptitudes with the math/science teachers being even lower. Increases in lifetime compensation is found to raise the scholastic aptitude of teachers hired across all schools, with diminishing returns in schools with more favorable working conditions. However, the lower 26% of the teacher aptitude distribution seems to not respond to compensation at all with only marginal gains up to the 60th percentile. Furthermore, bonus/merit pay or additional school activity income do not seem to be significant in recruiting/retaining high aptitude teachers.

Reevaluating the Effect of Non-Teaching Wages on Teacher Attrition

Most researchers find that the non-teaching wage has a significant effect on teacher attrition. Surprisingly no study that estimates this effect actually uses former teachers? wages. The use of aggregate wage data can potentially cause upward bias coefficients due to selection issues. Using wages of former teachers in a simultaneous probit-tobit system of equations, the effect is estimated and found to be insignificant. The results indicate that higher teaching wages and student teaching significantly lower attrition while being attacked or threatened during the previous school year and whether the teacher lives in a household with income above $40,000 significantly increase attrition.

The Quantity and Quality of Teachers: A Dynamic Trade-off

We study the dynamics of the quantity and quality of teachers in the framework of dynamic general equilibrium OLG model. The quantity and quality are jointly set by a government agency wishing to maximize the quality of basic education per student while being bound by teachers’ collective bargaining agreement which equalizes teacher pay. Our model features two stages of education: basic and advanced (college), the latter being required of teachers. The cost of hiring teachers is influenced by the outside opportunities that college educated individuals have in the production sector. We show that this factor strengthens in the process of endogenous growth and moreover that it pushes the optimal trade-off between quantity and quality of teachers in the direction of the former. Namely, the number of teachers hired will grow over time while their relative quality (but not the absolute human capital attainment) will fall. This evolution of human capital accumulation is accompanied by increasing inequality, within the group of college educated workers in particular. Further, we consider the comparative dynamics effect of an exogenous skill biased technological change represented by a positive shock to productivity of the skilled workers, hence to the college premium. We show that this will exacerbate the negative trends in the quality of basic education in relation to GDP growth. Countering this trend would therefore require an increase in the share of GDP spent on basic education, assuming that the institutional setup of the school system remains unchanged.basic and college education, skill premium, student-teacher ratio

The Impact of the Internet on Information Searching and Demand for Traditional Information Resources

The Internet is an efficient information search tool whose growth may have caused a structural change in information search and acquisition behaviors. This study investigates the effects of growing Internet accessibility on these behaviors. Using U.S. public library circulation counts to quantify changes in the use of information resources, the analysis indicates that greater Internet accessibility contributes to increased demand for traditional information sources. That is, a complementary relationship exists between Internet and traditional sources. Further, the results suggest that limiting Internet access can reduce the demand for traditional content. These outcomes imply that improvements in Internet accessibility can have profound effects on human capital development.

The quantity and quality of teachers: a dynamic trade-off

We study the dynamics of the quantity and quality of teachers in the framework of dynamic general equilibrium OLG model. The quantity and quality are jointly set by a government agency wishing to maximize the quality of basic education per student while being bound by teachers' collective bargaining agreement which equalizes teacher pay. Our model features two stages of education: basic and advanced (college), the latter being required of teachers. The cost of hiring teachers is influenced by the outside opportunities that college educated individuals have in the production sector. We show that this factor strengthens in the process of endogenous growth and moreover that it pushes the optimal trade-off between quantity and quality of teachers in the direction of the former. Namely, the number of teachers hired will grow over time while their relative quality (but not the absolute human capital attainment) will fall. This evolution of human capital accumulation is accompanied by increasing inequality, within the group of college educated workers in particular. Further, we consider the comparative dynamics effect of an exogenous skill biased technological change represented by a positive shock to productivity of the skilled workers, hence to the college premium. We show that this will exacerbate the negative trends in the quality of basic education in relation to GDP growth. Countering this trend would therefore require an increase in the share of GDP spent on basic education, assuming that the institutional setup of the school system remains unchanged

Leisure, refuge and solidarity:messages in visitors’ books as microforms of travel writing

Visitors’ books not only trace developments in modern tourism, but they also reveal changes in the socio-cultural and language attitudes of travellers from all walks of life over prolonged periods of time. This article investigates messages in visitors’ books from Wales from the mid-nineteenth century up to the present and argues for their recognition as microforms of travel writing. Despite their brevity, entries in visitors’ books are a highly complex form of travel writing particularly in the inscribers’ self-fashioning of identity for future readers. The article examines how writerly choices are not only directly rooted in the discourse of travel, but also in socio-political circumstances in the individual travellers’ countries of origin and their travel destinations

Pennsylvania Folklife Vol. 37, No. 4

• Pennsylvania Redware • Intaglio • Silhouette Glass • Marionettes • Ceramics • Fretted Dulcimers • Satisfying the Hungry • Festival Focus • Festival Programs • Hex Signs • Dutch Fries • Metal and Slate Engraving • Antler Lore • What are Knobbits? • Wood Sculpture • Scherenschnitte and Frakturhttps://digitalcommons.ursinus.edu/pafolklifemag/1120/thumbnail.jp

Embodied pain—negotiating the boundaries of possible action

Pain is a protective strategy, which emerges from on-going interaction between body and world. However, pain is often thought of as a unitary output—an end product experienced as an intrusion upon an often unsuspecting perceiver.55 We know a lot about how nociception relates to pain, informed by both biological and psychological influences,30,68,96 how pain intrudes into awareness,5,26,29,34 and how it relates to clinical variables, such as suffering and disability.35 However, despite significant advances, the mechanisms of pain intrusion remain elusive.62 In this article, we stress a functional view of pain as more than experience, as defensive action operating in the context of uncertain threat.Although traditional characterisations of perception as a product of sensory information have been critiqued,19,41,52 including in pain,87,94 there is now a well-advanced contemporary view that all perception is embodied and embedded.41,46,65,77,84,86 Here, embodied is defined by action, the premise that cognition extends beyond the brain so that an ever-changing body is at the core of how our experiences are shaped; this may be the unconscious workings of our immune system or the collaborative efforts made to avoid movement. Embedded refers to the situated interaction between the embodied being and the external environment, in both place (current context) and time (evolutionary context).From this view, all experience is inferential,78 dynamic,22,54 and related to action in the world.2,21,24 Thus, to describe the experience of pain, we must understand it within its evolved, learned, and ultimately threat-defined context.33,99 Theories of embodied experience are well advanced elsewhere, most notably in cybernetics,4,23,79 evolutionary biology,39,73,80 and consciousness.81,82 Its provenance can be traced to structural psychology,91 phenomenology,47,52,61 and perception.41,75 However, embodied domains have avoided pain, considering it either too simple32 or paradoxically too difficult.6Our embodied view, in many ways, complements the existing literature,18,27,36,42,93,95 supporting the growing understanding of pain as an experience inferred from uncertain information.3,17,83,98 However, it critically looks to extend this work beyond a passive information processing model that has come to dominate.48 Here, we emphasise the body, not separate from the brain nor the world, but part of the facility that actively shapes our experience of pain. This perspective defines pain in terms of action: an experience that, as part of a protective strategy, attempts to defend one's self in the presence of inferred threat