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 […]
A wish for honest arguments
Since Jennifer Jennings and Aaron Pallas are providing their wish list for the new administration this week, I’ll chime in with a hope that Paul Krugman’s observation for the economic policy team is also true in education. Here is what Krugman wrote January 10 when discussing the Romer-Bernstein graph on the anticipated effects of the […]
“Cheese and applause”
For trivia buffs in the future, as Barack Obama came out of the Capitol building, greeted by wild applause, the closed captioning for the official streaming read “[CHEESE AND APPLAUSE].” Well, that’s nutritious…
Caffeine plus inauguration = work??
About 30 minutes ago, I realized why I had a headache each of the last few mornings: caffeine withdrawal. Our 15-year-old supercaffeine machine solved that problem (and my appreciation to the nice folks at FakeSugarCompany for sending us that fake-sugar-plus-mocha flavor packet), and I now have the official inauguration streaming site up in another window. […]
Redesigning remedial education
The Bailey, Jeong, and Cho study of remedial education reported on by Inside Higher Ed today is not surprising, but it is still depressing: for the community-college students who most need direct assistance in skills, they are also the least likely to finish a sequence of remedial (aka developmental) courses and also likely not to […]