More L.A. Times criticism, and a question for Hechinger’s Richard Lee Colvin
A brief follow-up this morning to my criticism of the Los Angeles Times' disclosure of point estimates from a single model of teacher test-score raising prowess: Dana Goldstein points out that media critic Jack Shafer's commentary is factually wrong (as well as vicious), and the Kingsbury Center's John Cronin takes the same line I do […]
Mild rants to end the week.
In no particular order: Why does Worldcat give my Internet Explorer browser such fits? Why do I live in the same state as Rush Limbaugh, the balloon-boy family, and the money-desperate guy who threatens to burn the Quran? Or, rather, since I like living in Florida, why did they ever move here?? Has any quantitative social-science […]
Data use caution 1
Andy Rotherham pines for some use of data to predict and head off students who would otherwise drop out. For now I'll let others critique the at-risk label/concept, which has been around since the 1980s and before. For now, I'll note that there are interesting sensitivity/specificity problems with predicting who will drop out or who might […]
STEM, dumping-ground majors, and “pipeline” metaphors
This morning's blog entry by FSU physicist Paul Cottle illustrates the growth of undergraduate professional majors at the expense of science… and liberal arts. The reason why there aren't large numbers of physics majors at USF isn't the horde in philosophy but the hordes in business or starting out as pre-meds. I'm not sure what […]
Data use caution 2
By Sherman Dorn on September 10, 2010
Some additional thoughts on analyzing something like graduation/dropping out: if one looks at the transitions between attendance and nonattendance as generally clear but not always, there should be no surprise that we don't have great tools to predict whether someone is going to graduate or not from high school. That's because those tools are poor […]
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