Americas secondary enrollment trace, late 20th c.
Thanks to a a great Excel chart tip, I can now provide one way of summarizing synthetic-cohort educational attainment data from the following countries using census data from the second half of the 20th century: Brazil Chile Colombia Costa Rica Ecuador Those born in Mexico and enumerated in either Mexico or the U.S. in 1960, […]
Holding my fingers back, regretfully
I’d love to type a few hundred words on the major testing story in Florida this week, the Department of Education’s acknowledgment Wednesday that they blew the scores on last year’s tests. But here’s why I haven’t: This summer I’m teaching in Sarasota Wednesday evenings, and all that afternoon and evening I was either prepping, […]
Stop the presses: Conservative blasts merit pay!
Fordham Foundation guy-at-the-podcast Liam Julian criticizes merit pay in a Tallahassee Democrat op-ed. Oh, wait: he’s criticizing payments to students based on test scores, not teachers. Julian argues that the distinction between the two is in the difference between the roles: “Teachers are doing a job and students are receiving a service.” Two points here: First, […]
Topsy-turvy education news
I don’t know whether to cry or laugh at the news this morning: parents have to go to the Supreme Court to represent their children with disabilites and Secretary Spellings heads to the satirical Daily Show to deflect criticism stemming from the continuing scandals over Reading First and college student loan kickbacks.
Excel zen
By Sherman Dorn on May 26, 2007
I’m a fan of Edward Tufte in terms of information design, even if he did clash with Jakob Nielsen in an OK/Cancel superhero spoof of HCI gurus. Every year or so I dip into the website to see if there’s more stuff I need to learn. Tufte hates PowerPoint and Excel with a passion, though […]
Posted in Random comments, Writing and editing