Disappointing reading
After crunching through three rounds of papers, it’s time to take a break and review Edward Tufte’s Beautiful Evidence (2006), the fourth in a series of coffeetable books on presenting information: The Visual Display of Quantitative Information (1983), Envisioning Information (1990), and Visual Explanations (1997). Tufte’s website is a cornucopia of fascinating discussion of graphics and […]
The discussion glow
I left the classroom for a few minutes this evening, after telling students to arrange themselves in small groups, making sure that each group had at least one member who had read each of the two books I had assigned the class (half to Gilberto Conchas’s The Color of Success and half to David Tyack’s […]
NCLB identifies wrong target for students with disabilities
Erin Dillon’s short piece yesterday, Labeled: The Students Behind NCLB’s ‘Disabilities’ Designation, is a response to criticism of NCLB as unrealistic about the achievement of students with disabilities. Dillon argues that because approximately half of students with disabilities are identified as having learning disabilities, and because of the overrepresentation of minorities in special education, the critics […]
Tufte-d morning
I was lazy this morning and exercised by jogging in place on an exercise mat, browsing/read through Edward Tufte’s Beautiful Evidence. While Tufte’s idea of sparklines (in chapter 2) is appealing, I am not nearly as impressed by this book as by his other volumes, espcially Visual Explanations. I am not yet sure why. Then […]
Performance pay fairy tales
A long time ago in a galaxy far away, a governor promised to raise teacher pay, if only it would be based on performance. Let us evaluate teachers based on what they do and what their students do, he said, and the keys to the kingdom will be yours, as will the goose that lays […]