Teachers' Pay and Pupil Performance
If you pay peanuts, do you get monkeys? If teachers were better paid and higher up the national income distribution, would there be an improvement in pupil performance? Peter Dolton and Oscar Marcenaro-Gutierrez examine the enormous variation in teachers' pay across OECD countries and its significance for educational outcomes.
Exploring the Relationship Between Household Income and High School Graduation Rates
To better understand the factors that contributed to the rise in high school graduation rates between 2008 and 2015, this study explored the relationship between average household income and average four-year graduation rates for public high schools in Georgia counties in 2015. Additional economic factors including teacher salary, spending per pupil, local education revenue, maintenance and operation (M&O) tax, poverty rate and Gini index as well as social factors, including unemployment, class size, educational attainment and teen pregnancy rate were studied. Four ordinary least squares (OLS) models were generated to understand the impact of change in household income on high school graduation rates at all income levels and at the income extremes. Analysis of the results shows that household income is not statistically significant throughout the models for our full data set. When looking solely, at the upper and lower​ ​income​ ​brackets,​ ​household​ ​income​ ​is​ ​significant​ ​at​ ​the​ ​5%​ ​level.
‘There is no race so wretched that there is not something out there that cares for them’: Multiculturalism, understanding, empathy and prejudice in Discworld
Multiculturalism is at the heart of Mel Gibson’s chapter. Arguing that stories situated in Ankh-Morpork, Discworld’s major capital and the focal point of many Discworld stories, in particular deal with the opportunities, problems and, sometimes, sheer craziness associated with multi- and cross-cultural debates and realities, Gibson draws on European models of multiculturalism. She analyses how, alongside debating the nature of prejudice and oppression, the City Watch stories in particular explore ways in which a multicultural space may work.