
Teachers, parents, and researchers have long recognized that unruly students in classrooms can impact the quality of education for other pupils, but it has been difficult to estimate their impact. In The Long-Run Effects of Disruptive Peers(NBER Working Paper No. 22042), Scott E. Carrell, Mark Hoekstra, and Elira Kuka report that classroom disruptions lead to more than just short-term lower grades
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Mark Twain attributed to Benjamin Disraeli the famous remark: ‘There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.’ In every industry, from education to healthcare to travel, the generation of quantitative data is considered important to maintain quality through competition. Yet statistics rarely show what they seem. If you look at recent airline
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Jay Leno’s Jaywalking segments are notorious for providing multiple facepalm moments. Leno’s classic 4th of July segment is no disappointment in that respect, for it shows multiple interviewees stymied by simple American civics questions. Jay Walking: citizens show no knowledge of… by TalkerOne The fact that the grandfather of the last family in Leno’s interview
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“Whether, in the end, science will prove to have been a blessing or a curse to mankind, is to my mind, still a doubtful question.”—Bertrand Russell, The Future of Science (1924) By any casual reckoning, the modern scientific project has thus far proven a mixed success. To list the pros and cons would be a
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The National Conference of State Legislatures recently released a report entitled “No Time to Lose: How to Build a World-Class Education System State by State.” Recognizing the United States ranks 17th in reading, 21st in science, and 26th in math in international comparisons like PISA, the report set out to discover what high-performing countries were
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Racial harmony, ever-elusive in American history, is proving difficult in modern America, too. Consider this story from the Claremont Independent: A group of students at the Claremont Colleges are in search of a roommate for next year, but insist that the roommate not be white. Karé Ureña (PZ ’18) posted on Facebook that non-white students
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