Paul Tough on grit
Paul Tough’s How Children Succeed is an interesting book about “grit” and other non-cognitive issues in childhood, well-written for the most part. ((Disclosure: I read an ebook version of the uncorrected proofs; I think the ebook expires for me in late fall.)) It is not without some significant weaknesses–primarily an exaggeration of the coherence of […]
Tenure application: perspectives from the almost-grizzled reviewer
Yesterday, my college had its first “T&P brown bag” discussion for tenure-earning faculty (tenure-earning being the local equivalent of tenure-track outside Florida). My teaching schedule conflicts with the discussion time, but I had been asked to be a participant as a former member of the college’s tenure and promotion committee. While or perhaps because tenured […]
Paul Tough’s How Children Succeed
I’m partway through Paul Tough’s new book, How Children Succeed. In his first book, Whatever It Takes, most readers focused on Tough’s portrayal of the Harlem Children’s Zone. What I noticed as an historian of education was his intellectual history of the culture-of-poverty arguments–a nice long chunk I would like most graduate students in the […]
Chris Christie hates the First Amendment
Probably not that much, but New Jersey’s governor ignored a truth about private associations as he tried out the “love the sinner teacher, hate the sin union” line at his keynote address last night: We believe that the majority of teachers in America know our system must be reformed to put students first so that […]
NCLB goose, meet Virginia-waiver gander
Over this last weekend, the gigantic inequalities in Virginia’s NCLB-waiver plan became a target of criticism by former Virginia state board member Andrew Rotherham, among others. Essentially, Virginia decided to set different academic achievement expectations by race and ethnicity, and many have legitimately pointed out that such policies allow many schools to evade responsibility for […]