Humanities are behind the sciences in the promise and danger of post-publication review
So there's a small scandal because the University of Chicago Press has dished on open-access in the latest Chicago Manual of Style. Let me state clearly that the editors of the Chicago Manual of Style have it dead wrong in taking a position about open-access within a style guide. This is as smart and productive as […]
Major education stories in 2010: same as the last verse, plus six
The St. Pete Times' education blog has posted an entry summarizing major K-12 2010 education stories in Florida. I looked back at my summary from the end of 2009 and realized many of the major stories last year continued this year: the effects of the Great Recession, college financial-aid reform, Race to the Top, common core standards, […]
Megan McArdle’s ignorance
If you propose a subjective system of evaluation by principals and peer evaluators, the spokesmen for the teachers union complain that subjective evaluations are open to abuse of power. Megan McArdle, The Problem of Measurement. There are legitimate questions about the type of structure and support necessary for better observation-based evaluation of teachers, but anyone […]
Teaching about religion
Andy Rotherham uses the overblown rhetoric about "Merry Christmas" vs. "Happy Holidays"* to point out that public K-12 schools generally do a lousy job of teaching about religion. He attributes this substantially to the skittishness many public schools have about the church-state boundary. Never mind the 1995 consensus statement that included (among others) ACLU and Baptist […]
How to be a public academic
I woke up this morning to frost on the roof (which may be typical in late December where you live, but not in Tampa), picked up the paper, said good morning to my spouse, saw my son was up though it's vacation, and then trimmed my beard and hair.* I must have been working very […]