You probably shouldn’t major in arts at Murray State University, or straight-up attend Shaw University

Well, this is depressing. PayScale did some “college ROI” and found that Harvey Mudd College is basically a more valuable education than Harvard or Stanford (red flag!) and (first link) there are a bunch of schools — topped by Shaw University in NC… Continue Reading

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Brief thought exercise: why do we keep applying business and market principles to the idea of education?

This will be a pretty short post, because if I wrote everything I wanted to write about it, I’d be here for hours and probably get off into a series of meandering sub-points that wouldn’t ultimately benefit anyone. Lest you… Continue Reading

Matt Teeters and the tricky dance of politics and education in Wyoming

Matt Teeters is a state representative in Wyoming who helped lead the charge for the state to officially reject the new Next Generation Science Standards, becoming the first state to officially do so. (It should be noted that the Governor of… Continue Reading

Why did David Coleman and company keep choosing “synthesis” as the word to best represent the new SAT? Argh.

If you’re unfamiliar with David Coleman, he’s one of the architects of the Common Core standards — and now he’s the guy who led the re-shaping/re-branding of the SAT. Here are the basics of the new test: back to 1600… Continue Reading

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Did David Cicarella and John DeStefano mark the future of teachers’ union compromises in New Haven?

I was a teacher for a couple of years, and I’ve stayed close to the education movement ever since — as a volunteer, an observer, and in other capacities. Some of my friends from teaching are now principals or district… Continue Reading

Are you planning on giving a lot of money to Harvard or Yale, or maybe Columbia? Stop. It’s not really worth it.

Check out that chart above. Basically, at a highly-selective school, a student is 14 times more likely to be from an affluent family than a poor family. That’s from new research via Brookings, which also notes this: There are number of… Continue Reading

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Big data is the future, but no one seems to understand it and we’re not teaching it enough. Can this end well?

Let’s follow the bouncing ball here: 1. The Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP) released the top 10 office trends of 2014 recently; admittedly it reads a little bit like a press release from someone in their 50s who’s nervous… Continue Reading

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Grades seem to matter more than content and learning these days to most students. Can something like Udacity or a MOOC fix that?

This is a pretty nuanced topic, and I’m not an extremely nuanced person, so we’ll tread lightly (gawd, I miss Walter White) for a second here. I’m in school right now, and I happen to be about six to eight… Continue Reading