Jonathan H. Mark

Teacher Survival Rates in St. Louis, 1969–1982

The paper reports teacher survival rates in the St. Louis metropolitan area and updates a similar 1978 study by the authors. High dropout rates continue to exist in the beginning years of teaching for each entering cohort. Survival rates appear to have peaked for cohorts entering in the early 1970s, with survival rates declining substantially for subsequent cohorts. Beginning with the cohort entering in 1975, females begin to have higher survival rates than do males. This is a reversal from the pre-1975 cohorts. Implications of the results are discussed, including those for teacher effectiveness, salaries, and future demand for new teachers.

Teacher Mobility and Productivity in a Metropolitan Area A Seven Year Case Study

Past trends and future problems.

The educational technology mix: Production functions from “Sesame Street”

This is a re-analysis of data collected in an evaluation of Sesame Street. The data were obtained from 695 kindergarten-aged children randomly selected from five areas of the United States. The purpose of the study was to examine the effects of Sesame Street in a multi-variate framework, and to develop production functions showing the contributions which could be derived from the production function paradigm, most especially what might be gained by examining the possible results of mixing television viewing with teacher effort.The major findings are that the more a child watches Sesame Street, the more he learns; the higher a childs social class the more he learns from watching the program; and that Sesame Street does not affect disadvantaged children more than advantaged children, and hence has limited utility as a means of reducing differences in school performance between the rich and poor. Limitations in the data prevented calculation of production functions estimating trade-offs between teacher input and television viewing, but the limited data available suggest that mixes are better than either teacher alone or television alone.

Determinants of Urban House Prices: A Methodological Comment

In this paper we have commented on some of the methodological issues in the original paper. We have attempted to clear up confusion relating to the use of factor analysis as an analytical tool for dealing with multicollinearity, and on the use of R2 values for choosing between regression equations. We have also offered a stronger rational for the testing of a hybrid model.

A Probability Model for Analyzing Interneighborhood Mobility

Publisher Summary This chapter reviews a probability model for analyzing interneighborhood mobility. Conventional mobility studies concentrate on this last change, primarily as a function of the familys progression through the various stages of its life cycle. In none of these studies are the interurban movements resulting from changes in the neighborhood characteristics of the housing bundle expressly considered. In past studies, the postulated net effect of income on movement has been an ambiguous one. Also certain traditionally specified variables may effect mobility quite differently in transitional areas than they do in general. One clear example of this can be seen in the case of married individual with school age children. Normally, such a family would be unlikely to move; however, in a transitional neighborhood, this family becomes the most likely to move. Neighborhood characteristics are a vital component in the proper specification of any model purporting to explain intraurban mobility.