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Sherman Dorn
Megan McArdle’s ignorance
If you propose a subjective system of evaluation by principals and peer evaluators, the spokesmen for the teachers union complain that subjective evaluations are open to abuse of power. Megan McArdle, The Problem of Measurement. There are legitimate questions about the type of structure and support necessary for better observation-based evaluation of teachers, but anyone […]
Teaching about religion
Andy Rotherham uses the overblown rhetoric about "Merry Christmas" vs. "Happy Holidays"* to point out that public K-12 schools generally do a lousy job of teaching about religion. He attributes this substantially to the skittishness many public schools have about the church-state boundary. Never mind the 1995 consensus statement that included (among others) ACLU and Baptist […]
How to be a public academic
I woke up this morning to frost on the roof (which may be typical in late December where you live, but not in Tampa), picked up the paper, said good morning to my spouse, saw my son was up though it's vacation, and then trimmed my beard and hair.* I must have been working very […]
Wherein I take the axe to my own ideas: evaluating predictions for 2008
For a few years, I've spent the last week of the calendar year doing the journalist/pundit job of highlighting several stories in the year. I have a few extra hours this week so I'm intending to make some predictions as well about 2011, and I thought, "Gee, what happened to predictions I've made in the […]
Toys, tech, and learning
A few days ago, Michael O'Malley summarized very nicely the cultural history of a middle-class Christmas. (He gives proper credit to Stephen Nissenbaum's The Battle for Christmas.) One of the consequences of a gift-giving culture within families has been the evolution of consumer electronics as children's toys. No, Christmas commercialism isn't entirely responsible for this; […]