Would a Value‐Added System of Retention Improve the Distribution of Teacher Quality? A Simulation of Alternative Policies

In this paper, we consider several features of teacher‐retention policies based on value‐added measures of effectiveness under a variety of empirically grounded rules and parameters. We consider the effects of policy design by varying the standard above which satisfactory teachers are expected to perform. We simulate recently adopted policies that remove teachers based on consecutive unsatisfactory performance and compare these to policies that remove teachers based on poor performance on average over a multiyear period. We also consider the precision of the performance measure and the underlying variation in teacher quality on policy effects. Finally, the simulation makes a step forward by incorporating recent empirical findings of a relationship between teacher quality and natural attrition from the profession. Our results indicate that deselection policies based on value‐added measures have the potential to improve teacher quality, although understanding the role of policy design, self‐selected exits, and the underlying variation in teacher quality is essential for determining policy effects.     

Power,Profit and Prestige: The History of American Imperialist Expansion

ABSTRACT

This article provides a critical reading of the idea of ‘the reasonable’ in contemporary politics, as reflected in the work of John Rawls. I argue that this concept is best understood as a practice of political identification, which provides the template for mutual accommodation without concurrent agreement on any substantive commitments. However, by constructing a teleological story in which the reasonable leads naturally back to the liberal principles of justice, Rawls reveals the limits of the concept. Rather than ending political disagreement by establishing a shared foundation, prioritizing reasonableness only repurposes conflicts by transforming disagreement into a series of debates over the meaning of reasonableness itself, battles which are every bit as partisan and vicious as those Rawls sought to exclude. Revitalizing the idea of the reasonable requires abandoning the effort to deploy it as a technique of exclusion. Instead, reasonable politics should be oriented toward engagement with unreasonable critics.     

The intellectual legacy of J.E. Hodgetts

Abstract: J.E. (Ted) Hodgetts was influenced by both the political economy approach that he learned at the University of Toronto and by the comprehensive historical method developed by Leonard White, under whom he studied at Chicago. His first great project, Pioneer Public Service, convinced him that responsible government was impossible without responsible public administration. The authors examine how his response to management theories and practices evolved following his participation in the Glassco, Lambert and Gomery commissions. Hodgetts consistently refused the complete separation of politics and administration, and he promoted the use of management techniques to strengthen parliamentary supervision of the public service. The two key components of his legacy are thus a commitment to the democratic values of representative government and the comprehensive study of the internal dynamics of public administration in interaction with the relevant environmental factors.     

How African States keep their people poor: The legal issues

Many of the problems of inequity and poverty in Africa are the result of the state's own policies and legal requirements that serve to marginalise the poor and hamper the access of communities to environmental and other assets. The article looks at case studies of the regulation of forest access in Cameroon and the allocation of public revenues in Uganda.     

Notes and news

Russia and Asia have an ambiguous relationship. More than half of Russia is geographically in Asia and much of its history, too. Peter the Great switched Russia's main focus to Europe. But by the middle of the 19^th century the “Slavophiles” were contesting that “Westernising” view as the Russian Empire expanded. After World War II, the USSR played an important ideological role in Asia, until the failure of the invasion of Afghanistan. The ensuing collapse of the USSR resulted in a smaller, much more “European” Russia, which the West was nonetheless not eager to embrace. Today, the dynamic economies of Asia offer opportunities, not least as a market for Russia's energy exports. But the legacy of Peter the Great lives on.