Are campus chapters of X just branches or local entities?
Earlier this month, Students for Education Reform chapters in New York City (at NYU and Columbia) planned to publicly protest the lack of an agreement on teacher evaluations between the New York teachers union and the city schools. In the last year, the city Department of Education and the United Federation of Teachers agreed on […]
The new “trad” Irish folk ensemble
Since plenty of policy bloggers devote Friday to cultural stuff (and in one case fishing adventures), it’s time for me to play my hand. This is a story I reported on my personal blog about 6 years ago, and it still warms my heart. Every other week, Joseph’s friends gather at his house to play […]
Why shared governance is such a damned good thing… for administrators
After I stepped down 19 months ago from being the head of the faculty union at USF, I got ribbed by my successor about “turning to the dark side” with an appointment last August as a department chair. “More like the gray side,” I replied. (In my college, chairs are in the faculty union bargaining […]
“I read Nate Silver. I’m a fan of Nate Silver. State senator, you’re no Nate Silver.”
The takeaway from the Nate Silver-punditry smackdown this fall is not that any quantification and set of algorithms beat the pants off your nearest broadcast yodeler, but that quantification done well will beat the pants off your nearest broadcast yodeler, and that your nearest broadcast yodeler presents the equivalent of the Washington Generals in battles with […]
BCGD: Big College Graduation Deal
A few quick comments on the new report on college graduation by Pew researchers Richard Fry and Kim Parker, which estimates 33% bachelor’s degree completion among non-institutionalized 25- through 29-year-olds (HT: NYT’s Tamar Lewin): The increase in college graduation (from 28-29% before the recession to 33% now) is a noticeable boost, both for the pace of increase […]