The new numbers are out: almost 3 million kids are now enrolled in 6,700 charter schools across the U.S. According to the report, if we don’t include charters that opened in Fall 2014, 4% of all charters were closed down last year (223/(6,732-501)). Why did they close down? Simple: charter school opponents have ensured that charter schools face far more scrutiny in terms of how they operate...
Why are universities full of fascists?
This question often leaps to mind when I read about the lack of free speech and exchange of ideas at the modern university. Wendy Kaminer provides a succinct explanation in the Washington Post. How did we get here? How did a verbal defense of free speech become tantamount to a hate crime and offensive words become the equivalent of physical assaults? You can credit — or blame — progressives for...
I knew emotional intelligence was bad
However, in jobs that involved fewer emotional demands, the results reversed. The more emotionally intelligent employees were, the lower their job performance. For mechanics, scientists, and accountants, emotional intelligence was a liability rather than an asset. Although more research is needed to unpack these results, one promising explanation is that these employees were paying attention to...
Data on anti-Semitism
Kevin Drum notes the divergent trends (U.S. vs. worldwide) of anti-Semitic incidents.Yet another reason to be glad you’re an American:
Interesting website of data visualizations
Why college isn’t always worth it
Regardless of your opinion of the study’s methods, it only feeds the public perception that college has been oversold, and may not be worth the cost. So more bad news for higher ed, as this appears in a major newspaper:
Problems with double-blind RCTs
Perhaps the most influential and rigorous of these early studies was the Good Friday experiment, conducted in 1962 by Walter Pahnke, a psychiatrist and minister working on a Ph.D. dissertation under Leary at Harvard. In a double-blind experiment, twenty divinity students received a capsule of white powder right before a Good Friday service at Marsh Chapel, on the Boston University campus; ten...
More alcohol data: don’t drink Hennessy or Everclear
I am disappointed that my beverage of choice, box wine, did not make the list.
Future of higher ed: survey of 2,800 academic leaders
Scroll down to the 2nd chart: Note the top four factors having “the greatest impact on the future of higher education”; on the chart the first is cost, and the next three are essentially “proving the value of a college degree”: Cost/student debt – 62% Work force development/gainful employment – 42% Assessment of learning outcomes – 31% Competency-based...
2015 Northwestern-Duke Causal Inference Workshops
From my email: Northwestern University and Duke University are holding two workshops on Research Design for Causal Inference this year. They will run back-to-back at Northwestern Law School in downtown Chicago. We invite you to attend either or both. Apologies for the length of this message. Main workshop: Monday – Friday, July 13-17, 2015 Advanced workshop: Sunday-Wednesday, July 19-22...