Student privacy and social infrastructure
Current debates over student privacy should remind us that infrastructure leaves legacies for decades, including policy and technological infrastructure. ((That is also a theme of a recent Backstory Radio podcast.)) This weekend, the New York Times published a column by Sue Dynarski about one proposal to change student privacy laws, a proposal that would make it almost impossible to use administrative […]
William Torrey Harris warned against “hothouse” education in the 19th century, and the New York Times is on it!
Science writer David Kohn has an op-ed in this morning’s New York Times, Let the Kids Learn Through Play. For historians, the first three words ring alarm bells: Twenty years ago, kids in preschool, kindergarten and even first and second grade spent much of their time playing… [emphasis added] Great: another Myth of the Golden Age. Maybe […]
Deist school reform and teacher evaluations
As my colleague Audrey Amrein-Beardsley pointed out earlier today, there is a battle royale coming up this week in New York, with a hearing on the changes in state teacher evaluation policy mandated by this year’s budget agreement in Albany. Amrein-Beardsley sees the issue focused on value-added measures, in part because that is the obsession […]
Marc Tucker and the declension myth in American education debates
This month, Marc Tucker has written two blog entries for Ed Week that together present a frequently-used argument about the decline of America’s schools. ((While such claims are sprinkled through the last 100 years, the modern progenitor is the 1983 report, A Nation at Risk, with its claims about “a rising tide of mediocrity.”)) On April 16, […]
What do doctoral admissions committees look for?
Last week, I was in Portland with a chance to rub elbows with some very important people–no, not anyone who is likely to attend Davos next year but Gates Millennium Scholars. These students are on an alternative-spring break week engaged in service in Oregon. Most are undergraduates, with a sprinkling of masters and doctoral students. It’s a great […]