Academic freedom and administrators
Dean Dad has an important dissent from the oft-expressed views that administrators ain’t got no academic freedom, as Stanley Fish might claim. DD points out the legitimate restrictions on what administrators can say:
On communicating math standards
Florida’s Board of Education has recently approved new state standards in math, and I think it’s the most constructive long-term decision the board has made in years. My judgment isn’t based on the fact that I’m a friend and colleague of one member of the group that drafted the new standards. I looked at the […]
NAEP scores out
The National Assessment of Educational Progress (2007) scores are out, and here’s a quick response on reading for the country and Florida: 1) The U.S. Department of Education report focuses on feel-good comparisons with 2005, when looking back further gives a different picture. Yes, in fourth grade reading for the country’s children, the average scale score has […]
Hoover and Rumsfeld
According to a New York Times story, the recent Hoover Institute appointment of Donald Rumsfeld has brought a petition: We, the undersigned members of the Stanford community, strongly object to the appointment of Donald Rumsfeld as a “distinguished visiting fellow” at Stanford’s Hoover Institution. We view the appointment as fundamentally incompatible with the ethical values […]
Icons and beacons
Eric Rauchway has the best short commentary on two recent University of California idiocies: In the Chemerinsky case, UC threatened Chemerinsky’s academic freedom; in the Summers case, UC threatened mine–and that of everyone else who teaches here. Nice bon mot, but I wish Rauchway had explained it more clearly: UCI Chancellor Michael Drake was violating Chemerinsky’s […]