Chingos/Peterson vouchers study does not support authors’ claims
This morning, I recommend downloading and reading Sara Goldrick-Rab’s review of the Brookings Institute Chingos/Peterson study of vouchers’ effects on college attendance. Bottom line (from p. 7): Policymakers and practitioners interested in the effectiveness of school voucher programs should indeed attend to the results of this study, which—contrary to the interpretation of the authors—convincingly demonstrates that in […]
Brief note on CTU strike
Unfortunately, I’ve got a ton of stuff to do this week, or I’d write a longer note on the Chicago strike. But please read Dana Goldstein’s blog entry today, which has a useful thumbnail history of teachers unions. A few notes: 1. Politics of public-employee unions. While Matthew Yglesias is correct that the politics of […]
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 […]