Of course not, it’s a matter of laws versus the Constitution. From Volokh: What I found noteworthy, though, was the statement from Ibrahim Hooper, the spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations: [Anti-Muslim speakers] create a hostile learning environment for Muslim and Arab-American students, and that’s what they’re designed to do. … They’re designed to demonize Muslim and...
Racist teachers in India
This kind of study is difficult to refute, given the strong internal validity (random assignment of caste to exams) and external validity (actual grading versus a laboratory setting). The study involved an exam competition in which teachers graded exams that included a cover sheet listing randomly assigned characteristics (caste, gender, and age) about the students. The researchers chose India...
Student has $328,000 in student loan debt!
And no, there is no moral hazard with the federal loan forgiveness program: He graduated from Ohio State’s law school in 2010—a particularly tough year for Ohio law grads, according to a study by a law professor at the school, Deborah Jones Merritt. And he had $328,000 in student debt, according to the New York Times. TaxProf Blog noted the story. Times were good when Shirkey began law school...
Was the move towards inquiry-based learning a mistake?
Seventy teachers from the UK were sent to Shanghai to study classroom methods to investigate why Chinese students perform so well. Upon their return, the teachers reported that much of China’s success came from teaching methods the UK has been moving away from for the past 40 years. The Chinese favour a “chalk and talk” approach, whereas countries such as the UK, US, Australia and New Zealand...
Good news for NC charters
A bill passed by the state Senate on Wednesday would force school districts to share more of their tax funding with charter schools, but critics say it may open the coffers unfairly.
Using math to look smart in meetings
From the Cooper Review. The percentage one is now in my toolbox.
The cult of the Ph.D.
The primary, overarching purpose of doctoral programs is to produce professors. Graduate school has a cult-like effect on what you think you should want as a graduate student. I have seen it turn people who thought they wanted to go work for the Defense Department turn into quivering blobs of jelly because they failed, five years later, to get a visiting position at Oklahoma State. It doesn’t...
The key to Napoleon’s success
Napoleon excelled at mathematics. ‘To be a good general you must know mathematics,’ he later observed, ‘it serves to direct your thinking in a thousand circumstances.’ He was helped by his prodigious memory. ‘A singular thing about me is my memory,’ he once boasted. ‘As a boy I knew the logarithms of thirty or forty numbers.’ Napoleon was given...
Fascinating data on racism across the U.S.
Based on Google searches for the word “nigger,” aggregated by regions. Why is this a good measure of something traditionally very difficult to measure? “Google data, evidence suggests, are unlikely to suffer from major social censoring,” Stephens-Davidowitz wrote in a previous paper. “Google searchers are online and likely alone, both of which make it easier to...
IES funding to piggyback on NPSAS:16 data collection
Requirements for Applications Using the National Postsecondary Student Aid Study Applicants must meet the requirements listed under the Postsecondary and Adult Education topic as set out in Part II.A.8 of the Education Research Grants Request for applications (available athttp://ies.ed.gov/funding/. Under this topic, applicants may design studies to explore the relationship of malleable factors...