Ron Matus drinks the kool-aid
Aaaiiiieeee! One of the local, well-trusted education beat reporters for the St. Petersburg Times has bought into the bright students still bored criticism of NCLB. I’ve explained before why that’s an ugly argument against No Child Left Behind, as well as why it’s bad for what’s good about enrichment/advancement programs but I’ll repeat the gist: […]
Minimal Sansom blogging for a while
At least for a few weeks, there will be little discussion here about Florida House Speaker Ray Sansom because there are multiple investigations under way, from a grand jury in Tallahassee to an ethics commission and maybe others. While others such as Howard Troxler are having fun, I’ll enjoy their work and wait for the […]
iTunes rock stars and the cultural script of college teaching
Listmania time! I’m glad that I’m in the tenth hottest profession (though some would disagree). And apparently I have the seventh best job in the whole world. Yeah… Let’s be clear: tenured university faculty (who are the minority of faculty in the U.S.) have significant benefits in terms of due process on the job and […]
Cooling the mark out — an explanation
Several comments on my discussion of CC remedial/developmental education asked what “cooling the mark out” meant. In 1952, Erving Goffman’s “On Cooling the Mark Out: Some Aspects of Adaptation to Failure” appeared in Psychiatry. (At the time, Goffman was a graduate student in sociology at the University of Chicago. Not a bad start to his […]
One step in the right direction… but let’s end single “national evaluation” studies
As Stephen Sawchuk notes, the stimulus bill package requires randomly-controlled studies of federally-funded performance pay (from the Teacher Incentive Fund, which is receiving $$BIG in the stimulus). From pp. 166-167 of the draft: Provided further, That a portion of these funds shall also be used for a rigorous national evaluation by the Institute of Education […]