I will leave to others the task of debating the actual educational conditions of Success Academy Charter Schools, as discussed in this deep, disturbing profile in the New York Times. I will further let others debate the actual meaning of standardized testing and the paucity of evidence that constant testing actually generates superior educational outcomes. I […]
Continue reading →I was unsatisfied with my piece in response to Paul Campos today, so I took to Medium to write a rundown of the current condition of college as defined by its past this morning. Check it out.
Continue reading →Here Paul F. Campos, a law professor in the University of Colorado system, shows how not to write about data and policy. 1. He cites essentially none of his data. There’s nothing to evaluate here because there’s no way to tell where he’s getting his numbers from. Most of his data gets no citation at […]
Continue reading →I’m drawing close to completing and defending my dissertation. I’m going to write up some stuff about it soon, as I genuinely think there’s some interesting things for people who are interested in educational policy in there. (You may roll your eyes if you choose.) Briefly, though, I want to say a quick word about […]
Continue reading →Last week I wrote a long post on what I see as a dangerous trend in my field’s focus, away from the traditional prose instruction that institutions and policymakers still see as valuable, and towards increasingly abstruse and disconnected subjects in critical pedagogy, pop culture, theory, and digital abstraction. I find these areas to be engaging and generative, […]
Continue reading →Some people will no doubt ding me for being positively quoted in this National Review piece about campus speech codes. That sort of thing never really bothers me; I said what I said on Twitter about the chilling effect of current campus speech norms and I stand by it. Guilt by association doesn’t move me. No, the […]
Continue reading →This post is very long, and on a subject of interest to few. Consider invoking your privilege to not read it. (Seriously it’s really very long so please don’t read it and then complain that it’s too long. You’ve been warned.) For the last few years I’ve filed dispatches from the Conference on College Composition and Communication. […]
Continue reading →This Michelle Goldberg essay on the Laura Kipnis kerfuffle at Northwestern is the sort of piece that seems to push my buttons so precisely that I don’t want to write about it, if that makes sense. It also reflects the tangled issues at the heart of questions of free thought and free expression. I applaud the […]
Continue reading →I’ve just added to my teaching portfolio a syllabus and some course materials for a proposed class in information literacy and data journalism, embedded below. These are materials that I developed for a job that just rejected me. It’s a shame I won’t get a chance to teach this course there, but maybe I’ll get […]
Continue reading →I learned this idea from a mentor of mine, and thus I can’t give proper credit to whoever thought it up. Perhaps it’s one of those pieces of lore that’s been floating around between teachers forever and belongs to no one. In any case. Anyone who’s been a teacher for long enough has probably encountered […]
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