Public spaces, private interests, religion and schools version part 376
On occasion, K-12 school systems can back into reasonable ways of negotiating church-state boundaries. In Collier County, Florida, as a result of conflict between the schools and a group wanting to pass out bibles, the Collier schools established a day that community groups could collectively present pamphlets, literature, etc. for students. The two conditions for participating […]
Please don’t prove me right THAT quickly
Yesterday morning I wrote a brief entry anticipating (and dreading) overgeneralization from the Arum and Roksa book, but I never expected Kevin Carey would be the quickest example out of the chute, complete with a straw-man caricature of administrators (which may well be true of some private college/university administrators, but I think Carey has a foot-wide brush […]
“Well short” of ideal data, according to the authors
A quick note before I teach this morning: There are higher-ed stories in the New York Times, Chronicle, and Inside Higher Ed this morning on Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa's new book, Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses (University of Chicago Press, 2011). I talked very briefly with Arum about his project in the […]
Uncouth and consequences
So USF and former football head coach Jim Leavitt settled the pending lawsuit over Leavitt's firing for $2.75 million. My flippant email to fellow union activists: "DO NOT HIT STUDENTS IN HOPES OF GETTING $2.75 MILLION!!!! … the coaching staff is different from you and me."* The St. Petersburg Times says that the payoff was a terrible […]
Books have little direct influence, but that’s generally been the case
One reason is that books have lost their place as primary vehicles for shaping education policy. Just like in other realms, books are being displaced by other media. A film like Waiting for “Superman” can have considerably more influence over education policy than any book. Articles and reports can be released on the Internet as soon […]