Assessing educational practices : the contribution of economics / edited by William E. Becker and William J. Baumol.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

The Economist's approaches / William J. Baumol and William E. Becker -- Some economies of precollege teaching / Frederick Flyer and Sherwin Rosen -- Making U.S. schools competitive / Rendigs Fels -- The Economics of market choice and at-risk students / Masato Aoki and Susan F. Feiner -- Incentives to study and the organization of secondary instruction / John H. Bishop -- The Economic return to school quality / David Card and Alan B. Krueger -- The Value of repeat data for individual students / Charles R. Link and James G. Mulligan -- Methods of teacher remuneration: merit pay and career ladders / Elchanan Cohn -- Teacher salaries and teacher retention / Peter Dolton and Wilbert van der Klaauw.

Assessing Educational Practices introduces the nonspecialist to the research methods used by economists in studies of educational practices and institutions. The nine chapters explain the ways economists think about teachers' salaries, student achievement, class size, school organization, and other subjects of current debate in education. Each author demonstrates how methods used in economics can be applied to measure the success and failure of educational practices.