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The problem is a political one and very similar to the political problem of global warming. Political discourse adopts a "scientified" version of language that uses semantic similarity as a kind of magic to transform naive opinion into "science". Education fares worse than science because so many educators use the same tactic to justify lamebrained acts like "school improvement plans" that have little more than a sprinkling of common sense behind them.
Need MORE Proof that Testing is Destroying Education?
Back in April, I spent a few minutes with one of my professional heroes: Dick Sagor—whose work on action research has been a direct attempt to raise the professional status and credibility of educators. Our conversation was anything but optimistic, though. Dick was convinced that the teachin...
Tom needs to go back and re-read The Lexus and the Olive Tree. The outpouring of conservative FUD hasn't changed the rest of the world.
To quote School Finance 101, Freidman's statistics are like those of charter school proponents in that the "best charter schools outperform the average public schools.'
An indictment of American character as the basis for criticism is at best, silly.
Tom Friedman's Law of Statistics refutes Chapter 1
Reading this completely incoherent, frustratingly unfathomable column by Tom Friedman, the star columnist at the New York Times, I wanted to pull my hair out. From first word to last, he confuses averages and extremes -- the stuff in my Chapter 1, which is the very first concept in statistics. F...
What ypu need to look at is the local Tea Party. What kind of decision-making apparatus do they have?
Bruinius is not the problem; the problem is that more than one person wishes to make her an officer of the school board. Those people have priorities that are seriously off base.
Put Ten Commandments on walls of schools, says Pinellas School Board candidate
The Pinellas school district would improve student discipline and better turn around struggling schools if it posted the Ten Commandments on school walls, said School Board candidate Judith Bruinius. It should also stop teaching evolution as fact instead of the "junk science" it is, she said. ...
Here's something that you might find interesting:
http://www.gapminder.org/world/#$majorMode=chart$is;shi=t;ly=2003;lb=f;il=t;fs=11;al=30;stl=t;st=t;nsl=t;se=t$wst;tts=C$ts;sp=5.59290322580644;ti=2002$zpv;v=0$inc_x;mmid=XCOORDS;iid=phAwcNAVuyj1jiMAkmq1iMg;by=ind$inc_y;mmid=YCOORDS;iid=tGdhNYGTGtunwzkKJ9aRhsA;by=ind$inc_s;uniValue=8.21;iid=phAwcNAVuyj0XOoBL_n5tAQ;by=ind$inc_c;uniValue=255;gid=CATID0;by=grp$map_x;scale=log;dataMin=194;dataMax=96846$map_y;scale=lin;dataMin=0.844;dataMax=8.7$map_s;sma=49;smi=2.65$cd;bd=0$inds=
It's a graph of children per female, by country, from 1955 to 2006 compliments of Hans Rosling. I use it in class to give kids a sense of scale and the global reach of policy.
I like the concept of teaching complexity. I'm at sea when it comes to how to go about teaching it.
A Dream of Education for the Future
The Purpose of Education Children need to learn what is needed to help them grow and achieve self-actualization (see also, Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs). No matter what the future brings in terms of the energy status of our communities, if we fail to create a social structure that supports this ...
Bad idea. Now he knows who you are.
Why Do I Keep Dreaming That I'm in President Obama's Law Class?
Like everyone, I am subject to nightly anxiety dreams. You're subject to nightly anxiety dreams, aren't you? Anyway, many times in these dreams I find myself in a colleague's law class, and usually I haven't done the reading and don't understand anything that they're saying and am hoping agains...
Apropos to Dave's comment... they also come in left handed and right handed twirled varieties. The whelks' shells, that is.
Roseate Spoonbills are awesome. On the East coast we have merely a handful. I recommend kayaking on the Loxahatchee in Jupiter for a great jungle-ish experience.
Sanibel Shout Out
Well, I've just returned from four days in Sanibel Island, Florida, where I was on the I guess you would call it "faculty" of the Sanibel Island Writer's Conference. It was truly an amazing conference, and I wanted to give a public thank you to Tom DeMarchi, my old nursery school classmate, for...
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