Why Are Standardized Tests So Long?

The Advanced Placement physics test is three hours long, encompassing 70 multiple choice questions and six to eight free-response questions. Other standardized tests, including the SAT and GRE, are similarly daunting. The LSAT (for lawyers) and MCAT (for doctors) both take up half a day.

But why? I sometimes wonder what's being tested: the student's knowledge of the material or his test-taking stamina.

Each additional hour of testing has declining returns in terms of evaluating the student's true underlying ability. It's always nice to have more data, but couldn't testing services draw pretty much the same conclusions from 30 multiple choice questions that they could from 70? Over a million students take the SAT alone each year. If each of these tests were an hour shorter with nearly the same results, wouldn't we all be better off? Not to mention, shorter tests are also less expensive to grade, at least for the free-response parts.

If we held the percentage of passing grades constant, I imagine we'd feel okay with a slightly different group of kids passing the shorter AP physics test but we'd be worried that a slightly different group of potential doctors was passing the shorter MCAT. But are the potential doctors who excel on short tests necessarily worse than those who excel on long tests?

How to Get Great Teacher Evaluations

From my experience the past two semesters, I've deduced the three simple steps to garnering favorable teacher evaluations:

(1) Be polarizing, to the point of frustrating the majority of your students while earning the deep admiration of a select few. In other words, become the academic equivalent of Sarah Palin.

(2) Don't enforce a strict attendance policy. Base the entire course grade on the final paper. Make it abundantly clear that students can just e-mail it to you if they want.

(3) Distribute teacher evaluations the last day of class.

And, voila! The only students filling out the evaluations are the ones who've liked you enough to deal with your eccentricities all semester. You've biased the sample in your favor.

Which would be great, if teacher evaluations actually mattered for anything.

Education as Accountability

Economists have modeled education as serving no purpose besides providing graduates a credible signal of their intellectual ability. Some employers have trouble assessing the quality of potential workers, but at least they can deduce something about the candidates based on their ability to get into and graduate from top schools, even if academic success is not perfectly correlated with workplace success. It doesn't matter what the students actually learned, as long as they had the follow-through to graduate. The most famous paper on this topic is Michael Spence's "Job Market Signaling," published in 1973.

Another function of education is accountability. As one professor pointed out to our class last year, we could have all found the syllabus online and read all of the course's books ourselves, so what's the point of doing it in a classroom setting? By enrolling in school (especially if you're paying your own way), you're setting up a situation with bad outcomes if you don't succeed. Whenever you hit a rough patch in the material, these consequences motive you to get through it, whereas otherwise you might have given up, if you were just learning on your own. And if we concede that being around a teacher and fellow students really does help you learn, this increasing your chances of success ever further.

I recently started taking a course in linear algebra (not at George Mason). The professor does nothing more than walk us through the textbook, page by page and sometimes word for word. He has other annoying habits, such as writing whole paragraphs on the white board or telling us about how he keeps getting fired. My classmates complain about his teaching methods, and he's definitely one of the worst teachers I've ever had. But if nothing else, I'm going through the textbook to answer his homework questions (or rather, the textbook author's homework questions), something I would have had a hard time motivating myself to do if I had just bought the textbook and put it on my coffee table, promising myself that I would get around to studying it someday.

Teachers' Appreciation Day Saves Taxpayers Money (Probably)

A Twitter colleague of mine opines about why she doesn't like Teachers' Appreciation Day:

And, just on a personal note, I think I’d rather be the person who I would have been in the absence of about 1/3 of the teachers I had in K-12. Surprisingly many of them were not only incompetent, but petty, power-hungry, and even vindictive. I remain angry and bitter about those damaging years, and it’s part of why I’m so interested in education now (Maybe I’ll write a whole post on my anger and bitterness another time). But, because it was a wealthy area, most of the students did just fine academically – despite these bad teachers, not because of them. And, every year, the parents were coughing up expensive gifts and gift certificates for the poor, underappreciated teachers. I reckon that many of the teachers who truly deserve some extra appreciation – those who work with severely underprivileged students, those whose schools are unsafe, those who don’t make a decent living – are those who are, sadly, the least likely to receive it, holiday or not.

I agree that it feels gross to systematically honor certain people, especially entire professions. But maybe society is better off because of it?

Teaching has all sorts of nonmonetary benefits, such as the satisfaction of influencing young lives, the favorable work schedule (summers off for most), and the various forms of recognition, including Teachers' Appreciation Day.

Because of nonmonetary benefits, fun jobs pay less, all else equal. Many people would happily choose teaching elementary school at $35,000 a year over a working a boring job at $50,000 a year.

If we cut some of these nonmonetary benefits, we'd have to increase teacher salaries, in order to keep the existing pool of teachers away from alternative professions. Teachers probably value the recognition more than it "costs" us to provide it, so paying teachers in recognition instead of cash is probably a good deal for taxpayers.

As another example: imagine how much more we would have to pay teenagers to become soldiers if there were no parades, standing ovations at public events, or other acts of respect.

Good Enough for Stanford Is Good Enough for Us

University of Rochester economist Steven Landsburg's "The Big Questions" has a fascinating discussion about how we value our own opinions above those of people who are just as smart, capable, and well-informed as we are. This stubborness often leads us to needlessly duplicate the work of others, such as in evaluating job applicants:

[George Mason University economist Robin] Hanson's best guess is that disagreements persist because we tend to overestimate our own intelligence, and therefore tend to put too much weight on our own opinions. One sees this in academic circles all the time. Every year, the members of my department devote prodigious amounts of energy--perhaps half our working hours over a period of several months--to evaluating the qualifications of applicants for faculty positions. At the same time, the faculties of MIT and Stanford are evaluating pretty much the same pool of candidates. Yet we persist in making offers to candidates we believe are strongest, as opposed to the candidates our Stanford colleagues believe are strongest--even though they're surely as well qualified to make judgments as we are. We could save ourselves a lot of time and effort by just announcing a policy that we're willing to hire anyone with an offer from Stanford.

An offer from Stanford is a very credible signal of quality. So credible, in fact, that the University of Rochester could use it as a substitute for its own expensive and time-consuming applicant screening process.

Taking this idea one step further, if such a practice were the norm, all the universities would want some place like Stanford to do all the legwork of screening applicants, while the rest of the universities could pick up the people who decline Stanford's offer.

Of course, Stanford isn't going to make enough offers to support the rest of the system (and it might even begin to make offers strategically to hurt the copy cats). And many, if not most, people with such an offer would accept it. Even expanding the criteria to "we'll hire anyone with an offer from an Ivy League school" or something similar wouldn't cut it, either.

But I could imagine a world in which some centralized body interviews and evaluates all the candidates. Universities would then be willing to hire an applicant if he has a sufficiently high score.

Then again, such mass evaluation has proven imperfect in the past. High school students with the best SAT scores or GPAs don't always become the best college students (though there is enough correlation that these measures still have value). Law students with the best grades or scores on the bar exam aren't always the best lawyers. But does the econ department at Rochester make better hires under the current system, which brings in face-to-face contact and subjective evaluation, than it would if it just based hires on scores? More importantly, even if the current system picks applicants slightly better, is it worth the huge amount of effort the system requires?

Maybe the differences between universities and departments are more important than Landsburg lets on. Perhaps the perfect candidate for Stanford is a poor fit for Rochester, if the programs have different focuses. Also, it would be difficult to assign objective scores to rate the quality of professors in the arts and similar disciplines.

Why Grades Matter in Law School but not Journalism School: Part 2

(See also part 1, where I talk the signaling effects of grades for the two professions.)

Two more reasons why grades matter in law school but not for journalism school: (1) small variances in skill are more important for lawyers and (2) young talented lawyers are easier to retain.

A small skill difference in a trial lawyer can mean the difference between a legal victory and a defeat, often with millions of dollars at stake. Thus, it's worth trying to get metrics, such as grades, on the skills of prospective lawyers, even if they are imprecise.

On most traditional newspaper beats, a highly talented journalist isn't much more valuable than an average journalist. Having the best reporter in the world on the Manatee County, FL, courts beat won't generate much more revenue for the paper than an average reporter would. The potential audience for the subject is only so big; this was especially true before the Internet and widespread syndication. There's less of an incentive to hunt for the best reporters out of college, especially based on such an imprecise measure as grades.

The true cream of the reporting crop can be extremely valuable, but once these reporters have demonstrated their talent, they have every reason to leave for bigger newspapers. There, they can earn more money, reach a wider audience, and live in a bigger city. The small papers that hired them out of college don't have the resources to make an equally appealing offer. Even if small papers are successful in hiring the very best journalists out of college, the papers will have a hard time retaining them.

On the other hand, law firms can more easily hold on to young talent. A young promising lawyer may very well stay at the firm that hired him out of college, as he will begin to gain seniority and work his way up to partner. Because law firms can expect to extract so much value from young employees who blossom, they have a big incentive to try to hire the best candidates right after they graduate.

When to Write Poorly

Writing is a crucial skill to invest in, no matter what your field. Whatever other knowledge you have is worth little if you cannot effectively explain it to others.

In Western society, the onus for ensuring understanding falls to the writer or speaker, not the reader or listener. Malcolm Gladwell points this out in "Outliers," in which he discusses how foreign pilots would often crash because they communicated problems too subtly to air traffic control:

Western communication has what linguists call a “transmitter orientation”—that is, it is considered the responsibility of the speaker to communicate ideas clearly and unambiguously. … But Korea, like many Asian countries, is receiver orientated. It is up to the listener to make sense of what is being said.

Sometimes, however, clarity in writing is sacrificed for other goals.

In academic journals, writers aim to impress. Writing that is overly technical, poorly organized, and difficult to follow can still build prestige for the writer, even if the underlying arguments are rubbish. Additionally, complicated math is often used for show, even if simpler math would be more appropriate for the topic. Making your paper easier to understand only makes it easier for others to criticize your arguments or data.

In the legal world, writers aim to complicate. Lawyers write contracts and other legal documents in language that can only be understood by other lawyers, keeping them all in business. Lengthy, convoluted documents are less likely to be read carefully by the people signing them, to the advantage of the parties creating such documents.

In academia, writers aim to meet page requirements. A high school student might make his point in 5 pages, but he is forced to include 5 more pages of tangents, needless repetition, and other fluff to reach a 10-page minimum. Similarly, the majority of doctoral students will submit dissertations that are hundreds of pages long, no matter what the topic.

Naming Campus Buildings after Alumni

Chico State's O'Connell Technology Center.

George Mason University, where I attend grad school, seems to have more than its fair share of buildings with generic names: College Hall, East Building, Engineering Building, Fine Arts Building, Lecture Hall, Performing Arts Building, Student Union I, Student Union II, and West Building (see the campus map).

Compare this to California State University, Chico, where I went for undergrad (map). There is a Performing Arts Center and a Physical Sciences Building (where, oddly, I once had a Spanish class), but the other buildings are named for alumni or nearby counties.

The difference is probably due to the age of each school. Chico State is the second-oldest CSU campus, established in 1887. GMU was established as part of the University of Virginia in 1957 and became independent in 1972. Although Chico State today has roughly half the student population of GMU, it has several times as many alumni (living or dead).

If someone were to construct a model for optimal timing for the naming of buildings, what would it entail? Certainly it would factor in the number of noteworthy alumni and the number of campus buildings over time. The alumni base grows every year, and the number of campus buildings is growing at most universities, but it's hard to predict the rates and accelerations of either decades into the future.

The university doesn't want to name all of its buildings after alumni too quickly, as the accomplishments of future alumni may be far grander. But at any point, the university can sell the naming rights, so to speak, by offering to name a building after a graduate upon receiving a sizable donation (though of course not all namings are conditional on a donation). Although the university may be better off in the long run if it paces itself, in any given year, there's a temptation to name all the buildings and reap the donation windfall now. This is "mortgaging the future" in a sense, as buildings named now can't be named later (unless new buildings are constructed, and one could argue that the university could always find something to name after a large donor). This instant gratification is functionally the same as how Indiana leased the rights to a foreign firm to collect highway tolls for 75 years in exchange for a hefty one-time payment.

What are the drawbacks of naming buildings after alumni? First, constantly renaming the buildings at your school can lead to confusion, but the students are coming and going so frequently that it probably doesn't matter much. There's something to be said for having a name that represents the building's function, like the Technology Center, but why not make it the O'Connell Technology Center (as it is at Chico State)? Of course, naming buildings after living people runs the risk of the person ending up in an embarrassing scandal; although this isn't the perfect analogy, remember that the Houston Astros once played at Enron Field.

Incidentally, GMU already has a Finley Hall, so it won't be an issue for me if I become wildly rich and successful (not that I'm holding my breath).

Why Are Library Overdue Fines so Cheap?

"When I took that book out of the library--see that author photo?--he was clean-shaven."

Library overdue fines aren't primarily about collecting money; they're about ensuring that patrons return their books ... at some point. Most fees seem to be around 10 cents a day, with maximums of a few dollars per item.

If the fine is too small (say, a penny a year), people won't be very motivated to return books promptly, as a fine of a few pennies is essentially free. Still, the fine will cause ethical dilemmas for at least some people, making them feel like they've done something wrong.

If the fine is too large (say, $10 a day), people who forget to turn their books in on time will probably never step foot in the library again, in order to evade the fine. They could almost have bought the book brand new for that amount of money! Other residents will now avoid the library in the first place. This is clearly not in the library's interest, as its primary goal is to encourage reading in the community.

The fine needs to be just big enough to spur a tinge of guilt but not too large as to scare borrowers away. Library fines are rarely legally enforced (though there are some exceptions, and borrowers lose privileges to check out any more material), so they function almost as "voluntary fines." If the fine is too high, many people will never pay.

Of course, to avoid late fees, books can be renewed (in some cases, endlessly). This policy helps both sides. Readers can keep the books for a little longer than they expected, as long as they let the library know, without having to pay a fine. If a library sees that a book has been renewed, that shows some sign of conscientiousness on the part of the reader, most of whom will eventually return the book without having to be fined.

University libraries have the most leverage over the literary scofflaws. At many colleges, an overdue library book can prevent a student from seeing his final grades, requesting official transcripts, enrolling in classes, or filing for graduating.

Another way to get those overdue books back in? Make it trendy. The San Francisco Library hosted a "fine amnesty" program in May of last year, in which it solicited celebrity excuse videos and asked librarygoers to submit their own stories, true or not. The best stories were shared on the Web site and included in the library's newsletter.

Why Grades Matter in Law School but not Journalism School: Part 1

As with my previous post, I'm interested here in how important grades really are in terms of signaling how successful a student will be in the professional workplace.

How much grades matter depends on the field.

In law school, grades are very important. At least in a student's first year or before he gets his first internship, this is the only proxy that firms have to judge his ability as a potential lawyer. He could present examples of his classwork, but firms aren't much interested in reviewing his performance in mock court or reading essays he's written about legal topics.

In journalism school, at least for those interested in print or online journalism, grades are far less crucial. This is because the firms have a much stronger proxy for determining whether a student will be successful. All journalism programs have some sort of student newspaper or other publication (at least as far as I know), and whatever articles you can produce for the student newspaper are a direct reflection on what kind of articles you can produce at a professional paper. While a professional paper will give reporters access to better sources and (maybe) better technology, it's doubtful that the change of scenery will change the inherent quality of the reporter's work much. It's easy to spot a good writer or a good investigative journalist based on only a few writing samples. Newspapers would be wise to hire based almost exclusively on the quality of prior work, assuming that the student's grades meet some minimum acceptable level.

UPDATE 3/23: I've written more on this subject here.

Princeton's Grade Deflation Probably Hurts Its Students

A recent New York Times story explores grumblings from Princeton students about how the university's stricter grading policy makes them look worse on the job market and in grad school applications compared with students from other schools:

With the job market not what it once was, even for Ivy Leaguers, Princetonians are complaining that the campaign against bulked-up G.P.A.’s may be coming at their expense.

“The nightmare scenario, if you will, is that you apply with a 3.5 from Princeton and someone just as smart as you applies with a 3.8 from Yale,” said Daniel E. Rauch, a senior from Millburn, N.J.

A stricter grading scale makes it easier to differentiate between Princeton students, as their GPAs now serve as a better signal of ability (at least academic ability). But it does nothing to help in the ranking of Princeton students against students from other schools. A 3.8 Yale student might be equivalent to either a 3.5 Princeton student or a 3.8 Princeton student, but there's no way of telling.

As the Princeton senior cites, it's awkward for students to explain anyway their lesser GPAs when compared against students from other schools. No two GPA systems are the same, but it's hard for potential employers and grad school recruiters to judge applicants fairly with this caveat in mind; what else do they have to go on? Perhaps Princeton is doing its students a disservice by making a 3.8 student at another school look like only a 3.5 student at Princeton. Some of its students may be denied professional or academic opportunities because of their misleading GPAs, which in turn leads to less achievement by Princeton students and therefore less prestige for the university as a whole. It would be better for Princeton to muddy the GPA waters like all the other schools.

Additionally, grades have only a weak bearing on workplace success to begin with, so it makes even less sense to punish students with marginally inferior academic performance. The only thing grades should communicate is that a student was able to get through an academic program and work diligently. It's doubtful that a 3.8 student is going to be much more successful in the workplace as a rule than will a 3.5 student.

As College Admission Slots Shrink, a Shift to Local Low Achievers

This year, there were a record number of applicants at my alma mater, Chico State, and the rest of the California State University system (Chico E-R). The swell of applicants is competing for fewer slots than were available in prior years, because of state budget cuts:

Where 81 percent of freshmen who applied to Chico State for the fall semester of 2009 were admitted, only about 51 percent are expected to be accepted for fall of 2010, Bee said.

For many of my brighter peers in high school, the CSU system was a backup in case they didn't get into to the University of California system (with the likes of UCLA and Berkeley). Now, many of these "safety" state schools are more competitive than ever.

That is, except for one group:

The index doesn't apply to students who live in what's called Chico State's "service area."

This consists of 12 north-state counties: Butte, Glenn, Colusa, Tehama, Sutter, Yuba, Trinity, Shasta, Siskiyou, Modoc, Lassen and Plumas.

Students from those counties who meet application deadlines and the CSU's minimum academic requirements, such as a 2.0 grade-point average, are guaranteed admission to Chico State.

Chico is 3 hours north of San Francisco (map), away from the major population centers in the Bay Area and Southern California. According to the 2000 Census, the counties in Chico's service area represent 2.01% of California's population.

A 2006 article in the student newspaper reports that 15% of CSUC students grew up in the service area, already a significant overrepresentation. In 2008, however, the number rose to 35%, and I'm assuming  the trend has only continued. (If anyone has more comprehensive figures, I'd love to see them.)

From an economic efficiency standpoint, does it make sense to guarantee spots for local students at the expense of students who grew up farther away? As with everything, there are tradeoffs. Campuses within the CSU system differ on many margins, but two important ones are location and academic programs.

Location
All students with a minimum 2.0 GPA are eligible to attend the CSU in their area, so those who want to stay close to home don't have much added incentive to achieve in high school. Other students, no matter what their GPAs, want to get as far away from home as possible. These preferences of staying and going are opposites, but neither is inherently superior. Yet the state's policy hurts the latter group. The group is already hurt by the recession, as many parents are earning less and will have a harder time affording to have their children live in the dorms.

Academic Programs
I was in the top 2% of my graduating class, but I chose Chico State for its journalism program. It's safe to assume that students with better grades are more concerned about which particular academic program is offered at each school. High-achieving students who enroll into their preferred programs are more likely to be motivated and end up with higher-paying jobs, which can lead to more state tax revenue. Yet the service-area policy takes slots away from these students in favor of people who choose a school because it's close to home.

Snow Days and Keynesian Beauty Contests

The view from outside my apartment this morning.

Overnight, 2 to 4 inches of snow fell in the D.C. area, and most local schools are closed (see this Washington Post story for more details).

For school administrators and others, deciding whether to shut down school is something of a Keynesian beauty contest. Old newspaper contests asked readers to select the most beautiful women among a series of photos. Entries were graded on how they fared against popular opinion. So, the game was to pick not the women whom the reader personally thought were the prettiest, but the ones the reader thought that most other people would judge as the prettiest.

What is the worst outcome for the school administrator? If he allows school to go on, someone might get injured or not be able to make it to school. However, if all the other local schools in the area are open, the onus shifts to the students. In contrast, a good case for negligence could be made if the other schools are closed and a student gets hurt at the one open school.

But school heads shouldn't always err on the side of closing, either. While students may appreciate such a school, parents and lawmakers will not. But a school cannot be blamed for closing on a day when all the other schools are closed as well.

In the sum, the school head's best play is to follow everyone else, as illustrated in the below payoff matrix (assuming that all the other schools more or less coordinate). In the game, the school head has a payoff of 0 if he follows the other schools and -1 if he doesn't, while the other schools are not affected by the choice of this one school. This is a version of the coordination game in game theory.

	Other schools: cancel	Other schools: don't cancel
Your school: cancel	0, 0	-1, 0
Your school: don't cancel	-1, 0	0, 0

Of course, if school is canceled, the more advanced the notice, the better. Canceling a 7:20 p.m. class at 7 p.m. isn't going to help anyone. So a school administrator is wise to wait and see how the field plays out but make a decision in enough time for students and parents to react.

Down the street.