Eduwonkette is a graduate student
Who says that students are powerless? Eduwonkette is Jennifer Jennings, a doctoral sociology student at Columbia University. In retrospect, it makes an enormous amount of sense, and “grad student at Columbia” was one of the categories Leo Casey and I tossed around this spring as a possibility for Eduwonkette’s identity. Jennings has worked with demographer […]
On sampling error and troubling year-to-year jumps in the data
Phi Delta Kappan’s Bill Bushaw responded to my entry Thursday on the sample distribution of the Kappan poll: For clarification, the Gallup Organization ensures that the poll sample is identified through a truly random process. This means it’s possible to oversample one portion of the population. In order to correct for this, the responses are […]
The 2008 Kappan poll of older, white, wealthy college-educated women east of the Rockies
The most important news to come out of today’s Kappan poll release is not the responses to any of the questions but the sample composition: 65% women, 84% white, 50% aged 50 and older, 44% college graduates (and 71% with some college experience), 43% with incomes $50K and above, and 19% from the Census West […]
The Project Method zombie
The NCTAF blog calls it “a 21st century education system.” Steve Lohr admires it as “the drive for technology-enabled reform of education.” The New Technology Foundation calls it “a fully proven model.” While I have some hopes for how technology might be used to change instruction, calling project-based learning new is something that raises alarms […]
We now return to our regularly-scheduled panic
Last week I was in California helping to surprise my mother for her 75th birthday, and despite fears of her finding out in advance (mothers tend to suss out these things), she swears up and down she had no clue. It’s been about 14 years since we all got together in the redwoods and pines […]