My question for President Obama on his State of the Union address
The White House is accepting questions on the State of the Union address at its YouTube channel, so I decided to submit one: Mr. President, you have talked frequently about the need to avoid teaching to the test. Many educators believe Race to the Top is inconsistent with that value. Can you name one step […]
The missing pieces on affordability discussions
Just a quick note on the White House proposal for changes in federal aid policy tied to college tuition and “value”: apparently the devil is going to be in even finer details. The primary concern I have is about the phrasing of changed student aid formulas in the following: Setting responsible tuition policy, offering relatively lower […]
The Pascal’s Wager wager
Welcome to my world, ed policy folks: small impacts can be very meaningful, but primarily in the long term. One of the sadder bits of the post-Lowrey story Chetty, Friedman, and Rockoff (s)extrapolation is the attempt to magnify the scale of outcomes beyond what the research shows. The economists concluded that the impact of shifting a […]
Why a STEM focus is difficult
The first Florida House hearing on higher education budgeting shows part of why it is difficult to have a “STEM focus” in a public college and university system: money woes suck up all the oxygen in a room. In Florida, both the statewide faculty union and administrators have been talking about the need to invest in the […]
Political reporters ignore what’s staring them in the face in Tampa
I have a political-debate hangover this morning–not from alcohol but from being on campus for most of 15 hours yesterday and getting home close to midnight. I was one of several USF faculty in the press room last night for the GOP debate on the USF Tampa campus, along with usual political-reporter go-to at USF, […]