I’ve had a couple of off-line conversations in the last week–one about measuring teacher effectiveness, the other about college graduation rates–that both led me to try answer the eternal question of : Why are academics so often wrong about public policy questions?
The short answer is: they’re trying to answer the wrong question.
The somewhat longer answer [...]
All Posts Tagged: 'Public Policy'
Teaching, the Null Hypothesis, and the Status Quo
Draining the Pool
The news that Lynn Olson, Education Week’s senior correspondent, is decamping to the Gates Foundation after more than two decades of writing thoughful trend pieces and news analyses reflects a disquiting trend in American education: the number of experienced journalists writing about schools and colleges for national newspapers and magazines is reaching a disturbingly low [...]






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