Thanks! Really appreciate getting a reply for you, and thanks for clarifying how you meant this passage to be understood.
I agree that you don’t claim the PR risks should disqualify charter cities, but you do cite it as a concern right? I think part of my confusion stems from the distinction between “X is a concern we’re noting” and “X is a parameter in the cost-effectiveness model”, and from trying to understand the relative importance of the various qualitative and quantitative arguments made throughout.
I.e., one way of interpreting your report would be:
There are various ways to think about the benefits of Charter Cities
Some of those ways are highly uncertain and/or difficulty to model, here are some briefly comments on why we think so
We’re going to focus on quantitatively modeling this one path to impact
On the basis of that model, we can’t recommend funding Charter Cities and don’t believe that they’re cost-effective for that particular path to impact
In that case, it makes less sense for me to think of the neocolonialism critique as a argument against Charter Cities, and more sense to think of it as an explanation for why you didn’t choose to prioritize analyzing a different path to impact.
Is that about right? Or closer to right than my original interpretation?
I think part of my confusion stems from the distinction between “X is a concern we’re noting” and “X is a parameter in the cost-effectiveness model”
The distinction is largely pragmatic. Charter cities, like many complex interventions, are hard to model quantitatively. For the report, we replicated, adjusted, and extended a quantitative model that Charter Cities Institute originally proposed. If that’s your primary theory of change for charter cities, it seems like the numbers don’t quite work out. But there are many other possible theories of change, and we would love to see charter city advocates spend some time turning those theories of change into quantitative models.
I think PR risks are relevant to most theories of change that involve charter cities, but they are certainly not my main concern.
Thanks! Really appreciate getting a reply for you, and thanks for clarifying how you meant this passage to be understood.
I agree that you don’t claim the PR risks should disqualify charter cities, but you do cite it as a concern right? I think part of my confusion stems from the distinction between “X is a concern we’re noting” and “X is a parameter in the cost-effectiveness model”, and from trying to understand the relative importance of the various qualitative and quantitative arguments made throughout.
I.e., one way of interpreting your report would be:
There are various ways to think about the benefits of Charter Cities
Some of those ways are highly uncertain and/or difficulty to model, here are some briefly comments on why we think so
We’re going to focus on quantitatively modeling this one path to impact
On the basis of that model, we can’t recommend funding Charter Cities and don’t believe that they’re cost-effective for that particular path to impact
In that case, it makes less sense for me to think of the neocolonialism critique as a argument against Charter Cities, and more sense to think of it as an explanation for why you didn’t choose to prioritize analyzing a different path to impact.
Is that about right? Or closer to right than my original interpretation?
The distinction is largely pragmatic. Charter cities, like many complex interventions, are hard to model quantitatively. For the report, we replicated, adjusted, and extended a quantitative model that Charter Cities Institute originally proposed. If that’s your primary theory of change for charter cities, it seems like the numbers don’t quite work out. But there are many other possible theories of change, and we would love to see charter city advocates spend some time turning those theories of change into quantitative models.
I think PR risks are relevant to most theories of change that involve charter cities, but they are certainly not my main concern.