The Conference on College Composition and Communication, where I’m hanging out right now, is organized by the National Council of Teachers of English. It’s good to be a part of that organization; John James deBoer, my paternal grandfather, was the 32nd president of the organization. A professor of Education at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, […]
Continue reading →I have argued, for some time, that there’s a basic misunderstanding about why some schools and school districts are considered good. Many argue that, thanks to the vagaries of local districting and funding of public education through property taxes, the hardest to educate kids are systematically excluded from the best schools. They aren’t wrong to […]
Continue reading →A colleague of mine sent along this excellent piece by John Ewing of Math for America. It’s a very necessary and important critique of the use of value added models in education assessment. (It’s also– are you listening, Nick Kristof?– an excellent example of academic writing that is accessible and understandable.) I highly, highly encourage […]
Continue reading →So there’s been another spate of journalists complaining about academics lately, which is a cyclical exercise. This time, they’re really working the angle where they claim to show respect to academics in the abstract, but use this ostensible respect as a way to heap more disrespect onto actual academics. The latest flavor: how come academics […]
Continue reading →This post by Ann Larson discusses, briefly, the rise of the “rage of the adjunct” essay genre. I’m glad that it does, as it itself is indicative of my frustrated, conflicted relationship towards that genre. It’s profoundly necessary, and has finally generated some much-needed media attention for the plight of adjuncts, which is a moral […]
Continue reading →This piece from Mike Konczal on the revelations that major tech firms colluded against their workers is, like most of Konczal’s work, a must-read, and I encourage you to really sink your teeth into what this says about the balance (or “balance”) between employers and employees in contemporary America. At the risk of descending into […]
Continue reading →Part of the reason I’m forever pouring cold water on the idea that the internet has made journalism or commentary egalitarian is that this canard threatens to obscure how powerfully the elite nature of media colors our understanding. Education is one of those places where this really hits home. Andrew Sullivan was kind enough to […]
Continue reading →In response to my last post I got another email of the type “you’re saying there’s no learning, you’re saying people are cursed, so why have schools/colleges at all, etc.” (I also got the typical influx of racist IQ science types, which, seriously, you guys, find somebody else, please.) I thought I made it pretty […]
Continue reading →It’s not uncommon for politics and policy to be distorted by a romantic vision of human nature, but nowhere is that more true than education. Here at Purdue, we have a strong freshman composition program, Introductory Composition at Purdue (ICAP). One of the reasons for its strength, in my opinion, is our conference system. English […]
Continue reading →So I got a heated email last night from someone who describes himself as “about as liberal as it gets.” He did not respond to my request to reprint his email, but to summarize, he was taking me to task for my attitude on education reform. This is not an unfamiliar position for me, to […]
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