Monthly Archives For November 2012

Stagnation Analysis

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Drawing on data from the U. S. Department of Education, Matthew Ladner of The Friedman Foundation found that reading scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) went from 285 in 1971 to 286 in 2008.

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McGreen Jobs

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College graduates, disappointed to find that they are working in minimum-wage positions rather than the “green jobs” their university promised them, might be startled to learn that they got their wish.

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Elites Become More So

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“Over the last thirty years, America’s test-prep companies have grown from almost nothing into a $5 billion annual industry, allowing the affluent to provide an admissions edge to their less able children.”–Ron Unz, The American Conservative, December 2012

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Agents of Inaccuracy

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“Despite the fact that more than half of faculty members say on surveys that an important goal for undergraduate instruction is to ‘encourage students to become agents of social change,’ colleges don’t have much of an effect on student political participation.” —Canadian sociologist Neil Gross

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Where Keynes was right

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From the blog of John Ray, Education International comes the following: Keynes did get some things right. His comment on education seems positively prophetic: “Education is the inculcation of the incomprehensible into the indifferent by the incompetent.”

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