A quartet of studies has arrived just in time for the Supreme Court’s consideration of an affirmative action case.
Monthly Archives For November 2012
Stagnation Analysis
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.
Academic Justice Just Social
One wonders if Superman will ever get remade with the tagline, “For truth, justice and the American way.”
Alger Hiss Still Guilty
More than a half a century after Alger Hiss betrayed his country, some academics still proclaim his innocence.
Columbia Prof Minimizes Scandals
Columbia University has a “director of the center for gender and sexuality law” by the name of Katherine Franke who is considered an authority on sexual matters by The New York Times.
McGreen Jobs
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.
Subsidiarity Due For Comeback
The Catholic principle of subsidiarity, whereby that level of government closest to the problem is the one best-equipped to deal with it, may be viewed as quaint but in public education, its inverse could be seen as disastrous.
Elites Become More So
“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
Agents of Inaccuracy
“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
Where Keynes was right
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.”