This graphic depressed the hell out of me. It seems that, possibly, our government and the schools are in collusion to jack up tuition as high as possible.
Site Map
-
Recent Posts
-
The Dads
-
Subscribe
Other Dad Blogs
Admin
And speaking of college tuition
02-Sep-10The Los Angeles Times recently published teacher effectiveness rankings for 3rd to 5th grade teachers, and guess what…the teachers are unhappy about it. Of course they are dragging out the typical excuses about the rankings being flawed, or being only a small part of a teachers performance.
The best part is that the L.A. Times story (link above) about their complaining has drawn even more attention to the rankings. It’s not technically a Streisand effect, but the outcome is the same. I love how the Times stuck a search box right in the middle of the story, so even if you missed the original series, you can search the rankings right from there.
Scary Graph of the Day
01-Sep-10I don’t really need to add any words to this. Is there any way to short the price of a college education?
Hat tip: Carpe Diem
This was a real assignment for 10th graders in Australia. Predictably, many people had a problem with this.
Given that is was assigned in a class on conflict and terrorism, I’m having a hard time getting too worked up over it. If you are teaching a class on conflict and terrorism, taking a look at the issues from the other side seems not only prudent, but necessary. Otherwise it’s not a class, it is propaganda.
If you are in the class of 2014…
17-Aug-10Clint Eastwood is better known as a sensitive director than as Dirty Harry.
They never twisted the coiled handset wire aimlessly around their wrists while chatting on the phone.
Second-hand smoke has always been an official carcinogen.
Pizza jockeys from Domino’s have never killed themselves to get your pizza there in under 30 minutes.
Nirvana is on the classic oldies station.
Now get off my damn lawn!
The Denver Post goes off on schools
15-Aug-10What is going on with Denver schools?
Public Schools Aren’t All That.
Smartest Students Are Stranded At The Top
Teaching Kids in “The Monkey House”
Imagine Teaching Your Kids At Home, In which “Educational Specialist Daniel Brigham laments how awesome it would be to homeschool his unborn daughter, if only it wasn’t so difficult to do. Ann Zeise found that article and left a comment, so if Daniel is willing to listen he has no excuse for remaining confused about the realities of HSing.
The higher education bubble?
12-Aug-10QOTD:
Maybe we’re getting rooked.
Forbes examines the whether college for (almost) all makes any sense.
What not to major in at college
12-Aug-10The top 20 worst paying college degrees.
I’m happy, and somewhat surprised, not to see history on that list. However, my wife’s degree is #1. Woo Hoo! I think a common thread through many of the majors on that list is that the skills you need to succeed in the food industry, or childcare, are not skills you pick up in a classroom. You don’t learn to cook, or how to deal with customers in class. You learn that stuff in the real world. Likewise with childcare. If you have a passion for early childhood education I doubt 4 years of college makes you any better at that job. In fact, I’d argue 4 years of experience is likely far, far more valuable.
This is the valedictorian speech that I would have given, if I had been #1 in my class, and if I time traveled back and 30 year old me gave the speech. I wasn’t this smart at 18.
… I have no interests because I saw every subject of study as work, and I excelled at every subject just for the purpose of excelling, not learning. And quite frankly, now I’m scared.
It’s not perfect. You can tell an 18 year old wrote it, as it’s a little heavy handed at times.
correlation does not imply causation
06-Aug-10Esquire has a nice visual that not only makes me thirsty, but also shows the relationship between income and drinking alcohol. It seems that as median income increases, so does the percentage of those who imbibe.
They don’t make the mistake of trying to imply causation one way or the other, but I thought the two possible interpretations they gave were a little odd. The first was that drinkers earn more money “due to the increased ‘social capital’ from networking, building relationships, and adding contacts to their BlackBerries”. The other was that “Poorer and less educated people are more afraid of alcohol because they are more susceptible to public health and educational messages.”
Poor people are afraid of alcohol? Seriously? I think a simpler explanation would be that some poor people forego drinking alcohol because they can’t afford it. Hmmm.