John Yoo and academic freedom
On the Balkanization blog, Deborah Pearlstein copies a memo from Berkeley (Boalt Hall) Law School dean Christopher Edley regarding John Yoo, the tenured faculty member at Boalt who wrote the torture-justification memos for the Bush administration. In it, Edley makes clear his disdain for Yoo’s reasoning and then argues that those who would want Yoo […]
NEA’s comments: righteousness over responsibility to members?
I’m an NEA member, through my membership in the United Faculty of Florida. I’m a skeptic and critic of high-stakes accountability. Wrote a book and a few articles on the topic. And I am astounded at the NEA’s comments on the Race to the Top draft regulations. (Hat tip.) It is one thing to submit […]
H1N1-motivated (and very brief) reviews of CamStudio, Captivate, and Elluminate
Preparation is better than panic, or so they say. With questions about the expected wave of H1N1 infections this fall and winter, my administration is trying to gently prod faculty into thinking about what might happen if 30-40% of students in a class are infected and absent. (Well, I’d hope they’re absent if they’re infectious.) […]
The principal as eunuch?
I will confess to tremendous confusion about the actual skill level of principals, especially after reading a bunch of stuff about teacher evaluation and teacher labor markets (and whether principals should be able to hire teachers directly). Many of those who criticize the current state of teacher evaluation note that principals usually are poorly trained […]
What “multiple measures” looks like in reality
Friday’s Sun-Sentinel article on the new evaluation scale for Florida high schools shows what happens when a state moves away from general-assessment test scores as the end-all and be-all of accountability. In this case, Florida’s new scale for high schools rewards schools for graduating more students, especially those who have problems with the state assessments, […]