Half a croissant, on a plate, with a sign in front of it saying '50c'
h a l f b a k e r y
"It would work, if you can find alternatives to each of the steps involved in this process."

idea: add, search, annotate, link, view, overview, recent, by name, random

meta: news, help, about, links, report a problem

account: browse anonymously, or get an account and write.

user:
pass:
register,


               

Kindergarden Salary Survey

Figure out which ones really are the good schools.
  (+4)
(+4)
  [vote for,
against]

So, it's a fairly common practice (at least in the US) for colleges and universities to perform salary surveys of their recent graduates, to prove that a degree from them is worth something. But how do you know you're going to be able to get into the good schools?

I propose that all education levels, starting in pre-school or kindergarden, could start doing salary surveys of their alumni, not recent, but about when they would all be 22, and maybe every decade thereafter. Obviously some students are going to go nowhere despite the best educational prep, and some will do well from the worst schools. But statistically, better education at any step of the way should improve your chances overall, so with a large enough sample, it should be somewhat valid.

It would be a bit of a lagging indicator, admittedly.

MechE, Dec 12 2012

[link]






       Great for identifying which schools were the best and worst, but as all the teachers will have moved on or become senile, I suspect that it will not provide a very useful report of the current situation. However you could use the data to estimate other peoples potential. i.e. if that school consistently produced this type of person, and these people also went to these schools then that means these people could be potentially undervalued as future employees, i.e. good value for my company. etc etc
PainOCommonSense, Dec 12 2012
  

       And in third grade we learn that it is spelled 'kindergarten.'
RayfordSteele, Dec 12 2012
  

       My high school published a list of where the graduating seniors went to college every year. Due to the lag issues that POCS mentioned I think it would be a lot more valuable to have a preparedness rating from the next school they go to, similar to what universities do. The teachers evaluate how prepared each of their students are for the current course so if a student starting high school went to a bad middle school that school will lose points for student preparedness.
DIYMatt, Dec 12 2012
  

       The problem with a preparedness rating is that, A) most students from a given lower school go to the same upper school, so knowing how well they're prepared within a curriculum doesn't tell us how well they're prepared for the working world.   

       B)It doesn't cover people who drop out between schools.   

       Honestly, a high school would only have a 4-6 year lag, which isn't to bad, as they don't change that quickly, and while specific teachers change (although not that quickly, in some locations grandkids end up with the same teachers), the institutional behavior of the school is somewhat more persistent.
MechE, Dec 12 2012
  

       Oh, and [Rayford], it's my language, I'll mangle it how I want to.
MechE, Dec 12 2012
  

       Won't this just map, more or less, to zip/postcodes?
calum, Dec 12 2012
  

       That's sort of the point. People always move to a given area when they have kids, because it has "the best schools", but the metric for that is generally standardized testing or similar. This should be a more real world metric, which would also indicate how well various other metrics really perform.
MechE, Dec 12 2012
  
      
[annotate]
  


 

back: main index

business  computer  culture  fashion  food  halfbakery  home  other  product  public  science  sport  vehicle