A conference was held last week at Harvard seeking to trace out the "hard problems" in the social sciences, following after David Hilbert's famous ranking of the hard problems in mathematics. I thought it might be interesting to talk about what we think the hard problems in education are. Note that...
This could be a very sad day - I choose differently
this is not policy per se, but it explains about me as a teacher. For those who do not know, Leaves on the Current is the screen name of my spouse. This was originally posted at Daily Kos1889 the birth of Adolph Hilter1999 the shootings at Columbine High SchoolEither could be an occasion to look...
Pay Kids to Do Well in School? I Vote Yes
For lots of reasons not necessarily laid out here. If we are going to make them do work they don't want to do, why not pay them? We get paid. And if they like it and they get paid, well. . . . And see Sidorkin.The kids had much in common. In all four cities, a majority were African American or...
Why Are 25 Hedge Fund Managers Worth 658,000 Teachers?
That is the question Les Leopold asks in this Huffington Post entry.Here is his opening paragraph: In 2009, the worst economic year for working people since the Great Depression, the top 25 hedge fund managers walked off with an average of $1 billion each. With the money those 25 people "earned," we...
"Dr. Death vs. The Vampire"
Just so people know that us academics are not completely pedantic, my novelette, "Dr Death vs. the Vampire" has just been published in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. My wife got very nervous when I had a bunch of different books on how to poison people laying around the hous...
Ravitch: A new agenda for school reform
this was written for and originally posted at Daily Kos. The links to my previous posts are to the Daily Kos versions of those piecesI used to be a strong supporter of school accountability and choice. So begin Diane Ravitch in an op ed in today's Washington Post titled A new agenda for school reform....