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Obama vs. Bill Gates – Place Your Bet

Friday, November 27th, 2009

These two heavyweights are both trying to improve education by throwing money at the problem. The Obama administration’s $4 billion “Race to the Top” fund will go to the states that can convince government raters that they have the best reform agendas. The feds are also spending $350 million to help create common assessments for the nation that will replace the individual tests that states currently create and use to rate schools as required by federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation.
Meanwhile, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is donating $350 million in the next ten years to answer the question: “What, exactly, makes a good teacher effective.
With the federal government spending over twelve times as much as the Gates foundation, you would think that they would show more dramatic and significant results. Since it is too soon to tell, all we can do is place our bets. What do you think. Email your pick to me (dgreen@stny.rr.com) and I will post the results. After I get your votes I will post a detailed rational for who I think will win and why.

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Freakonomics – Levitt & Dubner

Tuesday, November 17th, 2009

In their groundbreaking book, Freakonomics, Levitt and Dubner take an out-of-the-box look at data interpretation. In a time where educators look to data analysis to help improve instruction, this book and its sequel, SuperFreakonomics, give examples of how to take a unique look at available data. Here I have included an excerpt of a summary of their first book with a focus on how teachers can get caught cheating and the economics of crack dealing. I also include slides that show which characteristics correlate with success on tests and which do not. The big point for me is that blacks are not less intelligent than whites; they are just more likely to be poor. Watch this blog for insights from SuperFreakonomics.

Click here to see the excerpted summary of this book.

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Tags: Freakonomics, Frwajibinucs, Levitt & Dubner, Teachers Cheat
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Some States Will be Left Behind (SSWLB?)

Saturday, November 14th, 2009

Education Week reports that Hawaii’s teacher furlough might affect the state’s chances of wining part of the federal government’s Race to the top grant money. The article notes that fewer than half of the states are likely to win money. The grant process, just released, will funnel $4 billion to the winning states. Information that has been released about the process has already caused several states to rescind laws that prevent using results of state tests to evaluate teachers. Stay tuned to this blog for news on Race to the Top as it becomes available. Here is the link for the entire Education Week article.
http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2009/11/12/313413hiteacherfurloughs_ap.html?tkn=RSTFNJdV1%2Fuwf993yvUL6579oR1kR5GRR3Jx

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Nobody interviews for a living.

Thursday, October 15th, 2009

Interviews are less predictive of job performance than work samples, job-knowledge tests, and peer ratings of past job performance. Even a simple intelligence test is dramatically more useful. This is according to Dan and Chip Heath, authors of Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die. The article can be found in the January issue of Fast Company. (www.fastcompany.com) They cite studies that show that the only thing interviews correlate with is the ability to interview. People who think they are good at judging people in interviews need to think again. A college transcript is based on four years of the cumulative evaluation of 20 to 40 professors. If you think you can do better after an interview, I admire your self-esteem but not your judgment. So what does an administrator do? Simple, watch someone teach. Better yet, get input from people you trust who have seen the person in action. They are more likely to see the real thing as anyone can turn it on when the boss walks through. Listen carefully for indications of teaching talent rather than superficial judgments like those you would gather during an interview.

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Hard times at Harvard

Saturday, October 10th, 2009

If you have tightened your belt due to the economy lately, you are not alone. According to the October 9, 2009 New York Times, a decrease in its endowment has caused Harvard to make the following cuts. No more hot breakfasts in most dorms. No more pastries at the Widener Library. Varsity athletes no longer can count on free sweat suits and professors will have to go without cookies at faculty meetings. It has always been difficult for the rest of us to feel sorry for those at the richest university in the world, but now we have some rational for such feelings. I haven’t posted the article, as I am certain all of my readers have better things to do. I hope you find some humor in this as I did.

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