Origins of the “Dropout Problem”: The NanoMovie (Behind the Lens post)
So, I did this overnight: (Original URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPw63j78NW8) Sordid details: I painstakingly worked for 40 hours to film myself drawing all of the images on the whiteboard we used, and then shrank it down by Hollywood magic. I want to especially thank Joss Whedon for helping with the script. The elephant-piloting-spacecraft scene had to be […]
Why it’s counterproductive to confuse different educational challenges
Over at Jay Greene’s blog a few days ago, Matthew Ladner pondered what he calls an “epic fail” of education policy in Arizona. To put it briefly, the Arizona Board of Regents issued a recent study tracking college careers of students who graduated from high school in 2006, concluding that there was a wide disparity in […]
Dear Middle-Aged Dad
Dear Middle-Aged Dad, I’m a national columnist who just found myself in hot water because I think it’s conventional for people to gag over mixed-race marriages. Is there a way out of this mess? Gentle Reader: No. Dear Middle-Aged Dad, I’m an editor of a columnist who just said some obviously racist things. But he’s […]
Politico’s education team turns to the dark side of Politico
On Friday morning, Stephanie Simon posted a story on Politico‘s website, Name-calling turns nasty in education world. If it were on any site other than Politico, it would be just another faux-trends story that focuses more on insider gossip than serious analysis. And there might even have been some positive value, if only as a […]
19,000 reasons to pay attention to Common Core politics
According to the Orlando Sentinel’s Leslie Postal, the set of 19,000 comments that the Florida Department of Education received on the Common Core state standards is not quite the 20,000 comments on the state science standards when they were in the process of being rewritten in 2007-08. But 19,000 still easily outstrips most involvement of […]