ClaudiaFest reflection: Warnings about economic history and education
This weekend is a special conference held by the National Bureau of Economic Research, Human Capital and History: The American Record, or as the Twitter hashtag is suggesting, ClaudiaFest, in part a celebration of Claudia Goldin’s accomplishments as an economic historian. Oh, yes, and an economist, too. One of the papers is by Larry Katz and […]
Differential tuition for STEM fields (in either direction) is foolish policy
Earlier this weekend, FSU physics professor Paul Cottle lit into UF philosophy professor and Florida’s SUS faculty union leader Tom Auxter for an op-ed Friday in the Orlando Sentinel. I’ll spend little time on Paul Cottle’s stylistic argument that a 600-word column is a rhetorical non-starter if it spends the space criticizing current policy, other […]
Florida’s increasing high school graduation rate
As the Times, the Orlando Sentinel and other papers are reporting, the high school graduation rate for Florida’s public schools climbed by about 4% in 2011-12 from the (federally-defined) graduation rate reported for 2010, from 71% to 75% (rounding up in each case). More importantly, this is a substantial leap from the (federally-defined) graduation rate in 2006-07 […]
Common-sense education policy for a Wednesday afternoon
In the United States, it’s the middle of the week after Thanksgiving. You’ve had several days of work in a row with weeks of work staring at you before the next day off. We’re heading towards winter. Grover Norquist has more appearances on television this week than you’ve ever had in your life. And Thomas […]
Common core standards may die on a cross moldy bread slice of social studies
I am not sure what to make of last week’s almost-unreported news of a “vision for the… framework” of social studies announced by the Council of Chief State School Officers. Checker Finn read vacuity in it. ((Before he panics, Finn needs to reread the 1990s Council on Basic Education report on the first attempt to […]