Holding people accountable
Ta-Nehisi Coates’ column today is both a reminder and good discussion of the difference between labeling individuals as racists (or non-racists) and understanding that our history is one filled with racism: The idea that racism lives in the heart of particularly evil individuals, as opposed to the heart of a democratic society, is reinforcing to […]
The MOOC poem (apologies to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow)
There was a giant MOOC, based on a little book when MOOC hype was trending torrid, And when MOOCS were good, they were very, very good, But when they were bad they were horrid. Profs stood on their heads, “students” watching from bed, With nobody by for to hinder; Peer-graded squalor, plagiarized in the hollers, […]
The institutional dilemmas of online education, or why there ain’t no such thing as a monolith
This entry may appear cryptic, because it was inspired or prodded or nagged into being by a Twitter conversation between Sara Goldrick-Rab of U. Wisconsin-Madison and Andrew Kelly of the American Enterprise Institute, discussing whether online education is a “profit center” of colleges and universities and whether the siren song of MOOCs is … um, […]
“The Grading Game,” or a think tank report review addendum
The think tank report review by Ken Libby and me is up on the National Education Policy Center website today. This is a review of the StudentsFirst State Policy Report Card from January, and there isn’t too much more to say than what is in it, but for what it’s worth: Ken (a doctoral student […]
Early childhood education, feminism, and public policy
This week the internet has apparently been exploding with meteors discussion of the president’s pre-school policy agenda. From a purely selfish standpoint, I wish the president had proposed this during the campaign. In the fall, I was teaching a graduate course in the history of childhood, and I organized the seminar around the central question, […]