USA Today reports that a boy in an Oklahoma City kindergarten was required to turn his t-shirt inside-out because it violated state policy concerning appropriate school attire. Cooper Barton, 5, comes from a family of Michigan fans. He went to school wearing a maize and blue shirt with “The Big House,” the nickname for Michigan’s […]
Archive | Education
It’s Deja Vu all Over Again
Remember how George W. Bush crafted an education “compromise” with Sen. Edward Kennedy and other leading Democrats? The federal government would significantly increase its spending on education, and in return the states would be held to strict, enforceable standards to improve public education, especially for the poor. Many of us predicted that the money would […]
Can the Education Department Place Conditions on NCLB Waivers?
By Jonathan H. Adler on September 25, 2011 6:54 pm in Education, Federalism, Spending Clause, Uncategorized
This past week, the Department of Education announced it would allow states to obtain waivers under the No Child Left Behind Act, but “would set a “high bar on flexibility.”. (HT: Neal McCluskey) According to the announcement: states can get relief from provisions of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act—or No Child Left Behind (NCLB)—in exchange […]
The Education Bubble
The Atlantic‘s Daniel Indiviglio highlights the enormous growth in student loan debt over the past twelve years. Indiviglio comments: This chart looks like a mistake, but it’s correct. Student loan debt has grown by 511% over this period. In the first quarter of 1999, just $90 billion in student loans were outstanding. As of the […]
Campus Carry passes Texas Senate
As an amendment to a broader bill on education. Details here, from the Austin American-Statesman. Campus carry already passed the House as a stand-alone bill, so it seems likely that the House will concur with the Senate amendment. Texas Governor Rick Perry has repeatedly indicated his support for the measure. The floor discussion of the amendment […]
Are Our Students Educated?
Are students learning anything in college? The research of NYU sociologist suggests that, at least for a sizable portion of undergraduates, the answer is “no.” Here are reports on Arum’s work from McClatchy and USA Today. As characterized in these stories, Arum’s research finds that a large proportion of undergraduate students are not learning to […]
John McWhorter on Efforts to Remove the “N Word” from Huckleberry Finn
Last week, co-blogger Jonathan Adler noted the publication of a new edition of Huckleberry Finn that replaces all of the book’s many uses of the word “nigger” with “slave” in order to make it more palatable to modern teachers who want to assign the book to students. In this recent column, prominent black linguist John […]
ROI for Law School
Probably many readers have seen this New York Times article, offering a lengthy and well-reported analysis in the Business Pages by David Segal of whether law school is a worthwhile investment. The analysis points to a couple of different factors, including: supply of lawyers outstripping demand, now and into the future; cost of legal education […]
Should We Teach Kids to Play to Win?
Political scientist Barry Rubin has an interesting column criticizing the modern tendency to teach kids that playing to win is bad: My son is playing on a local soccer team which has lost every one of its games, often by humiliating scores. The coach is a nice guy, but seems an archetype of contemporary thinking: […]
A “Generation of Nincompoops”?
AP writer Beth Harpaz worries that we are raising “a generation of nincompoops” because modern technology has obviated the need for kids to learn basic mechanical skills: Are we raising a generation of nincompoops? And do we have only ourselves to blame? Or are some of these things simply the result of kids growing up […]
Debating the Signaling Model of Education
At Econlog, GMU economist Bryan Caplan and Princeton economist Bill Dickens have been debating the signaling model of education. See this post for Bryan’s most recent contribution and links to earlier parts of the debate. Bryan argues that a large part of our education spending (perhaps as much as 80%) is socially wasteful “signaling.” It […]
Proposals for Increasing Student Achievement
Stuart Buck has two interesting proposals for increasing educational achievement among minority students, based on his book Acting White: The Ironic Legacy of Desegregation: I do suggest one idea that I think has some promise: eliminate individual grades, and let students compete against other schools in academic competitions. This idea is far from original. Rather, […]
The Bernardine Dohrn of the early 20th century: The terrorist professor at U of Texas law school
By David Kopel on May 24, 2010 3:56 pm in Academia, Congress, Constitutional History, Counter-Terrorism Policy, Criminal Law, Economic LIberties, Education, Guns, History, Law Schools, Legal Professor, Militia, Rehabilitating Lochner
My DU colleague Thomas Russell, who used to teach at the University of Texas Law school, has a written a paper, available on SSRN, which urges the University of Texas Law School to rename Simkins Hall, a law and graduate male student dormitory named for William Stewart Simkins. Simkins taught equity, contracts, procedure, and related topics at UT for […]
Taking the Washington Post to School
[NOTE: READ UPDATES BELOW] Today’s Washington Post features a story by Michael Birnbaum on the controversial new Texas social studies standards. As characterized by the Post, the standards sound quite bad. Ann Althouse was concerned by the story, so she looked at the Texas materials (for which the Post had declined to provide a link) […]
How President Obama is bringing real education reform to Colorado
Today is the final day of the 2010 Colorado legislature, and cautious optimists are looking forward to final passage of Senate Bill 191, a dramatic reform of Colorado’s tenure system for public school teachers. To be precise, after three years, Colorado teachers get a set of “due process” rights, not tenure, but the effect is […]