鸦片战争前新教传教士传播西方文化的特点

在中西文化交流史上,西方传教士曾经起过非常重要的作用。尽管这一阶段新教传教士所取得的成就,无论是从传教本身,还是从更广的传播西学的角度来看,都无法与此后的新教传教士相比,但是,＂评价新教早期成就的真正标准,不在于它收到了多少信徒,而在于它为后来的工作奠定的基础。最重要的基础是准备了初步的、但却是大批的中文基督教书籍＂。     

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抗战时期中国共产党保障农民政治利益思想

中国是一个农民占人口绝大多数的国家,农民问题能否得到解决,关系到中国革命和建设事业的发展,而农民问题的核心是利益。抗日战争时期,中国共产党为动员农民支持和参加民族解放战争,制定和实行了一系列保障农民政治利益的方针政策,使农民在政治上获得了解放,以主人翁的姿态投身于民族解放战争,为抗战的胜利提供了人力、物力支持。     

An illustration to assist in comparing and remembering several multiplicity adjustment methods

There are many well‐known or new methods to adjust statistical tests for multiplicity. This article provides an illustration helping lecturers or consultants to remember the differences of three important multiplicity adjustment methods and to explain them to non‐statisticians.     

A new global policy regime founded on invalid statistics? Hanushek,Woessmann, PISA,and economic growth

Several recent, highly influential comparative studies have made strong statistical claims that improvements on global learning assessments such as PISA will lead to higher GDP growth rates. These claims have provided the primary source of legitimation for policy reforms championed by leading international organisations, most notably the World Bank and OECD. To date there have been several critiques but these have been too limited to challenge the validity of the claims. The consequence is continued utilisation and citation of these strong claims, resulting in a growing aura of scientific truth and concrete policy reforms. In this piece we report findings from two original studies that invalidate these statistical claims. Our intent is to contribute to a more rigorous global discussion on education policy, as well as call attention to the fact that the new global policy regime is founded on flawed statistics.     

The effect of immigrant concentration in schools on native and immigrant children's reading and math skills

Using a unique and very rich PISA dataset from Denmark, we show that the immigrant concentration in the school influences reading and math skills for both immigrant children and native children. Overall, children in schools with a high immigrant concentration score lower on reading and math test scores. The negative effects associated with attending a school with a high immigrant concentration are fairly robust across estimation methods. IV estimates, taking into consideration that parental sorting across neighborhoods might bias the OLS estimates, indicate that immigrant concentration in schools is still important in determining children's math test scores. The estimates are less precise regarding the effect of immigrant concentration on reading test scores. The immigrant concentration in the school has a stronger effect for native children than for immigrant children, but the differences are more pronounced for the math test.     

Are we wasting our children's time by giving them more homework?

Following an identification strategy that allows us to largely eliminate unobserved student and teacher traits, we examine the effect of homework on math, science, English and history test scores for eighth grade students in the United States. Noting that failure to control for these effects yields selection biases on the estimated effect of homework, we find that math homework has a large and statistically meaningful effect on math test scores throughout our sample. However, additional homework in science, English and history are shown to have little to no impact on their respective test scores.     

Forward-Thinking Teens: The Effects of College Costs on Adolescent Risky Behavior

This paper analyzes the effect of college costs on teenagers’ engagement in risky behaviors before they are old enough to attend college. Individuals with brighter prospects for future schooling attainment may engage in less drug and alcohol use and risky sexual activity because they have more to lose if such behaviors have harmful effects in their lives. If teens correctly predict that higher college costs make future college enrollment less likely, then adolescents facing different expected costs may choose different levels of risky behavior. I find that lower college costs in teenagers’ states of residence raise their subjective expectations regarding college attendance and deter teenage substance use and sexual partnership. Specifically, a $1,000 reduction in tuition and fees at 2-year colleges in a youth's state of residence (roughly a 50% difference at the mean) is associated with a decline in the number of sexual partners the youth had in the past year (by 26%), the number of days in the past month the youth smoked (by 14%), and the number of days in the past month the youth used marijuana (by 23%). These findings suggest that the often-studied correlation between schooling and health habits emerges in adolescence because teenagers with brighter college prospects curb their risky behavior in accordance with their expectations. The results also imply that policies that improve teenagers’ educational prospects may be effective tools for reducing youthful involvement in such behaviors.     

Back to school blues: Seasonality of youth suicide and the academic calendar

Previous research has found evidence of academic benefits to longer school years. This paper investigates one of the many potential costs of increased school year length, documenting a dramatic decrease in youth suicide in months when school is not in session. A detailed analysis does not find that other potential explanations such as economic conditions, weather or seasonal affective disorder patterns can explain the decrease. This evidence suggests that youth may face increased stress and decreased mental health when school is in session.