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Interesting links to different sources discussing data on teacher pay, and what it shows in relation to different things that stakeholders might care about. educator pay varies significantly across states, from an average of $44,921 in Oklahoma to $77,957 in New York. Why should school administrators and government leaders care about teacher pay - beyond wanting their employees to be able to afford their living expenses? Below, we present research that examines this issue. What scholars have found is that teacher salaries are linked to employee retention and that better pay seems to draw smarter people to the field and into the classroom. It's not clear, however, whether higher salaries result in higher student achievement.

An excellent visual data story describing the gender pay gap (in America) and debunking the claim that there is no real difference in the amount men and women get paid. The pay gap varies depending on the occupation, working hours, education attainment, experience, and geography. That explains part of the difference in pay between men and women, but not all of it. And even though most economists agree that after adjusting for age, education, experience and other variables there's still an unexplained gap, there are voices who argue that the gender pay gap is a myth. Pay gap deniers purport that women's choices, rather than discrimination, cause the pay gap between women and men. But those choices are actually consequences of the social forces at play.

There is a lot of discussion recently about proposed changes to NSW Selective High Schools. This contentious issue may be something to consider for AT4. For example, see the articles in the Sydney Morning Herald such as this one:

But shouldn't there be some kind of accountability when you're talking about public money? My response would be what kind of accountability do we have now? Our schools are graded by test scores, and half the schools are doing worse than the other half and nobody does anything about that at all. This is the advantage of letting parents control the venue for education. And Michael Gove (excerpt at) https://twitter.com/Annelies_Leeuw/status/851945727110643717/photo/1

Our entire education system is faulty, claim experts. They worry that schools don't prepare kids for the world outside. But how could anyone prove what the future will be like? We set off on a round-the-world sleuthing trip to trace a statistic that has been causing headaches for students, teachers and politicians alike.

It's not just disadvantaged and vulnerable groups that struggle with financial decision-making. People who are highly educated in finance also make poor decisions - for instance, by focusing too much on growing their assets and ignoring risks. But studies show that when regulation is effective and the financial system can be trusted, even consumers with limited financial knowledge and information-processing capabilities have the potential to deal with complex financial decisions. For example, when considering mortgage protection insurance, applicants stand to benefit from knowing the actual risk of events like serious illness or injury that can affect their ability to meet monthly loan repayments.

Most of the poor people in the world are women. In no country on earth are women economically equal to men, and Australia is no exception. Research from Acoss and the University of New South Wales last year showed that a higher share of people living in poverty in Australia are women. The experience of living below the breadline in our very wealthy nation is a gendered one, for reasons that are complex and intertwined. As women progress through life, they encounter a series of barriers and setbacks that simply do not encumber men in the same way. The cause of gendered poverty is structural. It is entrenched in our workplace settings, and embedded in our personal relationships. It is at play at every stage of a woman's life, from childhood to the grave, making its mark on our education, our employment, our homes, our familial responsibilities and our retirement options. At its heart is the simple fact that women do the lion's share of caring for others. Caring is women's work, and our society does not value women's work.

In our teens and early twenties, we're still figuring out what we want to be when we grow up. As we get older, we start to settle into a career. In between, we switch jobs in the search. Based on data from the Current Population Survey, this is when people make the switches and the jobs they switch to.The chart above shows the rate by age, relative to the total number of people who switched to each job. So you see a lot of switching in the early years, and then things seem to settle down at older ages. If someone takes a new job when they're older, it tends towards management or jobs that require more education.

In 1967, following riots in Detroit, Philip Meyer used survey research methods, powered by a computer, to show that college-educated people were just as likely to have rioted as high school drop outs. His story was one of the first examples of computer assisted reporting and precision journalism, in which journalists use social science methodologies to extract and tell stories. In recognition of his contribution to the area, each year's best computer-driven and precision stories are celebrated through the Philip Meyer Journalism Award. The Award's 2016 winners have just been announced, with the successful entries showcasing techniques derived from quantitative and qualitative methods, such as surveys using randomly-selected respondents, descriptive and inferential statistical analysis, social network analysis, content analysis, field experiments, and more.

Numbers are often used to persuade rather than inform, statistical literacy needs to be improved, and so surely we need more statistics courses in schools and universities? Well, yes, but this should not mean more of the same. After years of researching and teaching statistical methods, I am not alone in concluding that the way in which we teach statistics can be counterproductive, with an overemphasis on mathematical foundations through probability theory, long lists of tests and formulae to apply, and toy problems involving, say, calculating the standard deviation of the weights of cod. The American Statistical Association's Guidelines for Assessment and Instruction in Statistics Education (2016) strongly recommended changing the pedagogy of statistics into one based on problemsolving, real-world examples, and with an emphasis on communication.

In this case, because pancreatic cancer is relatively rare, the impressive-sounding 50% reduction doesn't amount to very much. According to the American Cancer Society, a 60-year-old man has a 0.41% (1 in 241) chance of developing pancreatic cancer during the next ten years. (Risk varies greatly with age and is much lower at younger ages.) So cutting that risk in half might bring it down to about 0.2% (1 in 480). It's a 50% drop, sure, but the risk was already very small to begin with. In this case, it's more helpful to news and health care consumers to describe it as a 0.2 percentage point reduction. And then there are the harms of regular aspirin use; the Yale news release that the tweet links to doesn't mention any. But taking aspirin regularly isn't a harmless intervention - far from it. It's well known that taking aspirin every day can cause serious bleeding in the gastrointestinal system and, less frequently, in the brain. That's why guidelines for aspirin use in cardiovascular disease prevention don't recommend it for people at low risk of a heart attack. The potential benefits may be outweighed by the risks of a serious bleed.

Every year in Australia, the National Assessment Program - Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) results show Indigenous school students are well behind their non-Indigenous peers. Reducing this disparity is a vital part of Australia's national Closing the Gap policy. ... Using an updated version of our equivalent year levels metric, introduced in Grattan Institute's 2016 report Widening Gaps, we estimate year nine Indigenous students in very remote areas are: five years behind in numeracy six years behind in reading, and seven to eight years behind in writing. In other words, the average year nine Indigenous student in a very remote area scores about the same in NAPLAN reading as the average year three non-Indigenous city student, and significantly lower in writing. But it would be a big mistake to see this only as a problem for isolated outback communities. Most Indigenous students live in cities or regional areas. So, even though learning outcomes are worse in remote and very remote areas, city and regional students account for more than two-thirds of the lost years of learning.

As students from privileged backgrounds flock to schools that were supposed to be the ultimate symbol of egalitarianism, experts fear they may be reinforcing class and cultural divisions