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: The Buck Stops Here

Heckman is Wrong

By Stuart Buck, Esq.

James Heckman (Chicago, Nobel prize winner) has been arguing that society should offer universal preschool for youngsters. His main evidence for this claim -- which I agree with, by the way -- is a couple of extremely small studies from the 1970s. What bothers me, however, is how he depicts these studies. To wit, here's what he writes in the New York Times:Also holding back progress are those who claim that Perry and ABC are experiments with samples too small to accurately predict widespread impact and return on investment. This is a nonsensical argument. Their relatively small sample sizes actually speak for ? not against ? the strength of their findings. Dramatic differences between treatment and control-group outcomes are usually not found in small sample experiments, yet the differences in Perry and ABC are big and consistent in rigorous analyses of these data...continue to full post

Full post as published by The Buck Stops Here on September 14, 2013 (boomark / email).