Learner Occupational Success:
what is the school's responsibility?

There are economists who argue strongly that cognitive and economic development are linked. But they recognize that classrooms are not the only, and possibly not even the most important influences that affect this relationship.

For example, Hanushek & Woessmann comment,

Overall economic institutions … can be viewed as preconditions to economic development. And, without them, education and skills may not have the desired impact on economic outcomes . (Eric A.Hanushek and Ludger Woessmann, “The Role of Cognitive Skills in Economic Development” Journal of Economic Literature 2008, 46.3, 609)

Even within the school there are procedures and structures outside the classroom that stultify student cognitive development or render it impotent. The presentation below illustrates some of these and shows how tenuously schooling factors influence student "economic returns on investment."

Learner Occupational Success:
what is the school's responsibility?

Variables Profiling the Learner

Variables Profiling the School

Variables Profiling the Occupation

How Do School And Learner Variables Interact?

What Other Factors Intrude?

Is This the Whole Picture?

What about the Job Market?

Variables Profiling the Job Market

The Complete Model

Using the Basic Ethical Responsibility Rule

Moral Responsibility in the Education Industry
Teachers are generally held responsible for students' cognitive development which supposedly relates to occupational success. However, if development depends on economic structures, it is not clear that school improvement is necessary to an improved GDP.

Tracking in Schools
Two ways of tracking students in schools are confounded. Ability/interest tracking need not aim at external,e.g. economic, goals. External goals are chimerical.
 
Increasing Teaching Efficiency
Efficiency is, in fact, among the last of considerations when evaluating curriculum or pedagogy.

Productivity, Politics and Hypocrisy in American Public Education
Stretched between politics and technology, schools vary in output.

What Can a Teacher Do?
Contrary to popular image, a teacher is only one, and maybe not the most important, member of a cast of influences on student learning.

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