Blurts

Is this real?

But what if said editor pretended to be David Koch of the famed Koch Brothers? Well, that’s a different story altogether, apparently! And so Walker, believing himself to be on the phone with his patron, seems to have had a long conversation about busting Wisconsin’s unions.

The recent phony call to WI Governor Walker is priceless. In general, I am not a fan of making people look like fools. However, I make an exception when it is the only way to get people to speak their personal truth.

Note the comments on this post – approaching 15,000 when I read it.

Also – segment on NBC Nightly News.

CNN just carried this piece by Bill Bennett, an ex secretary of education, identifying the various low performance indicators of K-12 students. I personally cannot follow where this article goes – it mentions many issues and concerns and agendas, but I cannot figure out what Bill thinks is responsible for what.

The closest I think he comes to making a commitment is to comment on Florida

Florida, and the reform agenda former Gov. Jeb Bush instituted there, is one laboratory of experimentation getting a lot of attention these days. Some of his reforms with results include: ending social promotion, implementing performance pay for teachers, allowing alternative teacher certifications and creating a transparent system of grading schools and school districts.

The big data source for judging Florida reforms a success was an improvement in 4th grade reading performance.

Let me begin with this. I have an undergraduate degree in biology and I got into educational research because I became interested in student learning through an original interest in teaching this subject matter. However, I have spent much of my career in higher education wondering why sciences receive special treatment and why so many students want to take courses in the social sciences instead. Why do university administrators assume that courses and facilities in certain fields especially for the purposes of general education somehow require better resources? The focus on STEM education has long caused me to ask the same questions. If you are interested in my analysis, you can explore the comments available via this link. Somehow, there is this assumption that there is a link between economic competitiveness and STEM education. I get this, but the general focus rather than the focus on the a narrow range of student makes no sense to me. As far as economic concerns go, more ethical behavior rather than more science would be appreciated.

It is nice to see that I am not the only one asking such questions. Here is a Huffington Post piece by Alfie Kohn reaching very similar conclusions.

A colleague who often talks with me about the music industry sent me this graphic concerning revenue sources in the music industry. It is from the UK (note the Spotify data), but it does provide data on revenue sources. I know there are many issues here – the money to the artist vs. the money to the label, online content basically serving as advertising for other income options (concerts) – but the data do bear on the topic of compensation for content providers.