cross posted from Daily KosI have already weighed in on the Blueprint, in Obama's "Blueprint" for education - why this teacher cannot support it. Today I want to call to your attention a very important critic by Richard Rothstein, whose current position is as a research associate at the Education...
Education: A Race to Equity instead of the Race to the Top
One of the important names in education that too many currently involved in making policy do not seem to know is Herbert Kohl. Those of us on the Progressive end of the educational spectrum know how important the insight he has offered are, and rare is the progressive thinker on education who has...
Books that Broke my Brain
This meme is going around the net. Interesting to see so many right wingers, and shocking how many actually cite “The Bell Curve.” I would have expected Rand, but Murray? Yes, many on the right aspire to racism. They think they are brave for being willing to acknowledge this in public. ("It’s...
The End of "Constructivist"?
Interesting article on the declining usefulness of the idea of social construction. Not particularly radical, but does make an interesting argument about an overall shift going on at the intersection between the social sciences and humanities. And it's brief, always a benefit (that I seem often unable...
Who Needs a School Bus?
The Flying Fox transport system. 9 years old, 63 miles an hour, speed control: wooden fork. Brother in a bag. (Okay, I'm supposed to be reading a dissertation. But you were supposed to be doing something useful too, right?) via Boing Boin...
More on Ravitch
More discussions of Ravitch, and other interesting diaries on education (scroll down) by jeffbinnc on Open Lef...
Stats, Poverty, and Not So Smartness
Interesting discussion for lay people and those who haven't taken stats for a while about the statistics behind a recent study about the relationship between poverty and memory capacity. How can we talk about this better and make "information" like this less destructive to poor kids (who are always...
Comics, Evolution, the Brain, . . .
On the Origins of Comics: New York Double-takeEvolution lets us see comics, like almost anything human or even alive, in a panoramic context but also in extreme close-up, as close as a comics artist trying to grab readers’ attention in this frame or with that angle. And it can zoom smoothly between...