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cultural literacy
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teaching &
education
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late June 2014 |
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Mountain top in Chile to be blasted off (Guardian) for the Extremely Large Telescope Massive 'ocean' found below Earth's surface (New Scientist) 3x volume of surface oceans... a clue to where the surface oceans came from? |
animated gif of light echo around V808 Mon (Gizmodo) have we found the first TZO hybrid star? (Sky and Telescope) a neutron star wrapped in its former companion's matter The smallest black hole? (Starts with a Bang) it comes down to one of 3 possibilities |
Embrace the Lumpiverse (New Scientist) what if the universe is really not homogenous? New dark-matter simulation predicts abundant dark-matter halos without galaxies at their core in the Local Group (Science 2.0) star formation in the first galaxies quenched formation of the others.... and if the dark halos are there, how do we detect them? BICEP2 team hedging its bets? (NY Times) BICEP2 paper now published now contains some cautionary comments Matt Strassler comments Dwarf galaxies formed more than their fair share of stars (Hubble) especially during the early universe why are dwarf galaxies concentrated in thin sheets around the massive galaxies? (Astronomy magazine) Where are the parallel universes? (Science 2.0) but only for true believers |
The Higgs (discovered at CERN in 2012) seems to be a standard Higgs (Scientific American) the expected Higgs decay to fermions has now been seen (paper in Nature) Microsoft bets on quantum computing (NY Times) New Higgs Mass from CERN ATLAS: Still Twin Peaks, but getting closer: slightly different masses deduced from Higgs decay by photons vs. 4-lepton decay via Z bosons: commentary from Science 2.0 commentary from Matt Strassler |
the last of the Great Divide series Inequality is not inevitable (Joseph Steiglitz, NP, Economics, 2001) a short, clear, & damning indictment of America's current political and economic system addendum: The new age of Oligarchy (Daily Beast) Obama and the alliance of government with the 1% the Great (and secret) Facebook Mood Manipulation Experiment (The Atlantic) probably legal, but ethical?? the drone dilemma the slippery slope of continuous war? (Stimson Center) what if other countries start using drones on us? NY Times comments Wall Street Journal comments ---------------- NC leaders were outraged by climate claims. So they changed them. (Washington Post) the evilness of Walmart Starbucks the good (and Walmart the bad) (NY Times) the difference between paying for college (and paying poverty wages) and Walmart, the really, really bad: How Walmart costs US taxpayers $1.5 billion each year (Upworthy) so buy elsewhere and finally, Walmart the truly evil ---------------- maps The hardest places to live in America (NY Times) where Americans are healthy, wealthy or struggling... the South is pretty much of a disaster (although Wake, Orange, and Chatham counties in NC are standout exceptions) how much time we spend eating, grooming, thinking, praying, and more (Washington Post) by state Where HIV is found in the US (New Republic) once again, the South is a disaster... poverty (the root cause?) is a dangerous thing The Native American Take-Away (Vox) animated gif of the theft of Native Americans' lands over 200 years Europe: maps before and after World War I (NY Times) and the map now.... on the 100th anniversary of the start of WWI Where cattle, pigs, and chickens live (Vox) inquiring minds want to know ---------------- Why we should thank the rich (Washington Post) by Steve Forbes. gosh, there's a surprise Where gun stores outnumber museums and libraries and vice versa (Washington Post) a county-by-county map of the USA... NC is clearly a big gun-store state Iraq, redux Why are we taking advice from people who led us into a 'stupid war' -- and the present mess -- in the first place? version 1 (NY Times) ignoring the warnings version 2 (Washington Post) why should we listen to anything John McCain says about Iraq? version 3 (New York magazine) and how the 'liberals' Clinton, Biden, Kerry, Edwards, etc. pushed for war in 2003 version 4 (Washington Post) version 5 (The Atlantic) version 6 (Washington Post, again) version 7 (NY Times) listening to Dick Cheney, especially about Iraq, is never a good idea... and how can one person come up with so many lies? version 8 (Vox) 17 reasons not to trust Dick Cheney on Iraq (how about on anything?) version 9 (Philadelphia Inquirer) Chaney and amnesia version 10 (NY Times) for Bremer, Cheney, the Wall Street Journal, et al. it's 2003 all over again |
Math Common Core has parents stumbling (NY Times) Confessions of a grade-inflating professor (The Atlantic) an argument that grade inflation is a public service (!) NC bill authorizes "I love teachers" license plates to raise money to pay teachers more (Raleigh N&O) what's next. lemonade stands? Blowing up the (education) status quo (Raleigh N&O) reasonable suggestions, but likely DOA Let top teachers teach -- and earn -- more (Raleigh N&O) less reasonable, even more likely DOA |
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NASA recreates the atmosphere of Titan (NASA Goddard) an unappetizing job (and smell) How did the moon really form? (Science) a new isotopic study of moon rocks confirms that the moon formed from the collision of Earth and an impactor (named Theia)... and that the moon is 50% Earth-stuff and 50% Theia-stuff press release of the discoverers Earth's (and other planets') core started growing only 1 MY after solids condensed (Science) the whole process is estimated to have taken 100 MY June guide to the visible planets (Earth & Sky) 4 at night in early June, including Mercury Asteroid 2014 KH39's close approach to Earth (as in a moon distance) on 6/3/2014 (VirtualTelescope) watch it live here Asteroids that will come closest to Earth in the next 200 years or at least the known ones |
The ultimate in habitable-planet stellar systems? (New Scientist) French theorist designs a (quite unlikely) stable star system with 60 habitable Earth-sized planets the oldest exoplanets? (Sky and Telescope) 2 found around Kapteyn's star, a nearby star thought to have been formed in another galaxy Exoplanet type (rocky planets, gas dwarfs, ice/gas giants) depends on host star's metallicity (Nature) finally, a rubric for exoplanet formation? arXiv prepub here if Nature is inaccessible Exoplanets around M dwarfs sabotaged by stellar winds (Nature, via AAS) one more knock against habitable planets around M stars Kepler 10-c, the first Mega-Earth: changing the rules of exoplanets? (Washington Post) advertised in WaPo as 2.3x more massive than Earth, but 40% denser, meaning 7.5x denser than water .... caution: the mass estimate could well be an upper limit, as for all spectroscopic binary observations... in which case, this is likely much ado about nothing Astrobites thinks it is a big deal How often do carbon/diamond-rich planets form? (Astrobites) Alien Life: Will we know it when we see it? (World Science Festival, NYC, 1.5-hour video) an all-star panel (incl. Sara Seager) on exoplanets, exolife, and the origin of life... including a question from an s&m alum in the audience |
Further doubt cast on BICEP2 inflation claims? (Sky and Telescope) 2 other groups (Princeton and Berkeley) have combined BICEP2 and Planck data... with inconclusive results a summary of these 2 papers points and more: Big Bang finding challenged (Nature) challengers say that the BICEP2 team "jumped the gun." and "we have no evidence for or against gravitational waves." BICEP2 people say they've made revisions to their paper, but their results remain "unchanged" Big Bang blunder bursts multiverse bubble (Nature) The inflation paradigm is untestable, and thus scientifically meaningless. ouch. ---------------------- Magnetic fields near galactic SMBH's (Nature) there's a strong correlation -- over many orders of magnitude -- between mag field strength and accretion disk luminosity and How Black-hole Jets form (commentary from Sky and Telescope) Most colorful view of the universe (Hubble) or, the AAS is meeting and Hubble has nothing of substance to report? A new method of determining cosmic distances (Astrobites) using time delays in scattered light from AGNs Which spiral arm of the Milkw Way contains the sun? (Earth & Sky) the minor Orion arm also, Annotated Road Mao to the Galaxy (Scientific American) helped by 5 cepheids just found on the far side Ripples from the Big Bang: Listening to the beginning of time (World Science Festival, NYC, 1.5-hour video) An all-star panel (Guth, Steinhardt, Linde, and Kovac on the BICEP results, but pretty tame overall (especially Brian Greene's boring, self-centered waste of 30 minutes at the start), but things get interesting, perhaps even hostile, in the final 20 minutes the Illustris project (Illustris) a lot of hype, but quite lacking in science explanation |
Help Wanted: on the Theory of Everything (Quantum Frontiers) speaks for itself Radioactive leak shuts down EXO-200 (Nature) the detector searching for neutrino-less double beta decay also reports updated results Gravitational Instability and Turbulence around black holes? (Perimeter Institute) i.e., gravitational fields behaving like fluids 4-quark particle state confirmed (APS) apparently a charm, anti-charm, down, anti-up A photon-photon collider (Physics,org) to turn light into matter in a controlled experiment (although Mother Nature does it in a lot of places all the time) |
Father's Day Project: Build a Trebuchet (Science 2.0) Why Elon Musk is not Henry Ford (Washington Post) and why that's a bad thing The 5 biggest threats to human existence (Washington Post) yeah, yeah,... nuclear war, bioengineered pandemics, ... but also 2 surprises The Physics of Godzilla (Physics Today) sic Chester Nez dies at 93 (NY Times) the last of the original Navajo codetalkers... we owe them a great debt Where is my flying car? (NY Times) meditations on our lack of control over gravity Coming soon to NC dining? No guns, no service. (Raleigh N&O) irony? sarcasm? or neither? Bergdahl An ugly decision, but the right call (CNN) "...in an America-initiated war there are American responsibilities and commitments to those who fight it." The right call (NY Times) "Soldiers don’t risk their lives only for those Americans who deserve it; they do it for the nation as a whole." Don't we owe them the same? Sen. John McCain on the Berghdahl trade (CNN Feb 18, 2014) "the proposal was that they would release -- ... five really hard-core Taliban leaders ... for (Bergdahl). I would be inclined to support such a thing depending on ... details." .... so now he's saying he wouldn't have made the trade... because of the "details" ???? once you say you'd do it for five really hard-core Taliban leaders, what other details are there? |
In NC, our new and selfish view of learning (Raleigh N&O) from the Pope machine: (Art Pose is NC budget director) "A substantial increase in tuition would be good policy ... (because many taxpayers) derive no direct benefit from the UNC system" wow... so much for the value of public education in NC ... Common Core, in 9-year-old eyes (NY Times) Down the Occupation Ladder (NY Times) What the huge drop in cognitive job requirements since 2000 portends for today's college graduates teacher tenure Teacher Tenure ruled unconstitutional in California (EdWeek) on grounds that it violates the rights of minority and disadvantaged students Will teacher-tenure ruling change schools? (Atlantic) Teacher tenure does not hurt students (NY Times) "If tenure prevented student achievement, no-tenure Mississippi would have stellar schools whereas Massachusetts (tenured teachers) would have failing ones. The opposite is true." Eliminating teacher tenure won't improve education (Washington Post) teachers earn the same as they did 40 years ago, whereas pay for other college-educated professions had increased and the opposing view by the always hysterical and usually wrong Michelle Rhee: Tenure Loss is a Win for Teachers and Children ------------------- Struggle is a natural part of learning (Washington Post) a reply to the anti-Comon-Core lobby Houston school district holds job fair for NC teachers in Raleigh (Raleigh N & O) hundreds come The disappearance of cursive writing (NY Times) and what's lost with it As experienced teachers depart, outrage should arrive (Raleigh N & O) "how long will it take until (other NC teachers) feel outraged and cheated" Why teachers are qutting (OnPoint, WBUR, 1-hour-long radio) 3 teachers, on why they left the classroom |
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late May 2014 |
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predicted meteor shower a bust (Washington Post) I hate to say it, but I told you so Camelopardalids disappoint (Sky & Telescope) new meteor shower/storm on the night of May 23/24? (Sky & Telescope) best meteor shower of the year? (Astronomy magazine) "potential for 100 - 1000 meteors per hour" at peak time of 3 am on the morning of the 24th but I wouldn't bet on it... it's likely just excessive astro-hype Mercury's best evening show in quite a while (Astronomy) with a chart to help you find it Lightning linked to solar wind (Nature) correlation between solar wind intensity and frequency of lightning strikes found... but no direct cause & effect yet established Jupiter's red spot size smallest since discovery (Hubble) it's now 4x smaller than in the late 1800's Russia to close Int'l Space Station in 2020 due to US sanctions (Scientific American) well, at least one good thing comes out of this crisis ---------------------- a mini-cluster of climate change resources: 2013 summary of climate change data (ClimateChange) written for policy makers Global Climate Change (NASA) summary of scientific consensus What We Know about Climate Change (AAAS, 5/18/2014) Entire IPCC 2013 report on climate change probably more than you want Has Global Warming Paused? (Scientific American, 11/1/2013) Temperature plateau likely due to deep ocean warming (Climate Central, 7/23/2013) the source of the 97% consensus claim (PNAS) and the deniers: Overestimating of global warming in the last 20 years (Nature Climate Change, 9/3/2013) and their distortions: Climate Contrarians cook up new 'Controversy" (Michael Mann 5/20/14) a specific example: the data vs the distortion |
Did Cas A undergo a quark nova after the original supernova? (Sky & Telescope) pretty much rampant speculation... it comes down to the location of Ti and Fe Magnetar formation mystery solved? (Astronomy) mass-swapping with binary companion prevents the formation of a black hole Globular cluster stars are rotating around a common axis (Astronomy magazine) "astonishing" result contrary to simulations which predict original rotation should be erased |
Kepler mission re-configured (Scientific American) for exoplanets, supernovae, active galaxies exoplanet GU Psc b imaged (Gemini) mostly because it's 2000 au from its star |
Supermassive Black Hole doughnut model needs modification? (NASA NEOWISE) survey of 170,000 SMBH's shows that galaxies with hidden black holes are more clumped together than those of exposed black holes first proof that universe could have started from nothing (arXiv) or more precisely, as a quantum fluctuation -------------------------- Backlash to inflation discovery continues (Scientific American) or just more piling on? Rumours swirl over credibility of Big Bang ripple find (New Scientist) "The rumour is that the BICEP team has now admitted to (a) mistake" says blogger. "We've done no such thing" says BICEP leader. other science blogs/sites pitch in: Preposterous Universe National Geographic Resonaances (and probably the original source of the rumors) Science magazine even the Washington Post comments and why the rumors should be ignored the issue seems to come down to what you should (or should not) do when hard data is not available and this weekend's workshop on the CMB at Caltech should be interesting (videos to be posted) in the meantime, following up on the coming confirmation and what more to squeeze out of the data: First Light (Nature) How confirmation will come (National Geographic) -------------------------- on the 50th anniversary: How the Big Bang was discovered (NPR 6-minute story, 5/20/14) best one-line: "Physicists think they can do anything an engineer can do" Computer simulation of colliding "Antennae" galaxies reveals why galaxy mergers result in starbursts (Astronomy magazine) 8 mega-hours of supercomputer time show that the resulting turbulence results in gas compression Quantum twist could kill off the multiverse (New Scientist) too bad the same can't be said for articles on the multiverse |
Quantum Physics and Reality (World Science Festival, NYC, 1.5-hour Livestream video) panel discussion with David Z. Albert, Sean Carroll, & Sheldon Goldstein Quantum teleportation of data successful (NY Times) between 2 quantum bits 3 meters apart published article (Science) and even more quantum entanglement: Efimov states confirmed (Quanta) ATLAS challenge: Find the Higgs (Science 20) but only if you're good at computer programming Forget dark matter. Embrace MOND instead. (New Scientist) Mordehai Milgrom (the inventor of MOND) explains why The Action of General Relativity (Science 20) Supersymmetry and the crisis in physics (Scientific American May 2014 issue) either prove it right in the next year or face a monumental paradigm shift QBism: Is quantum uncertainty all in the mind? (New Scientist) but a much better article appeared in the June 2013 issue of Scientific American Does neutron lifetime discrepancy hint at new physics? (Scientific American) |
How the NRA rewrote the 2nd Amendment (Politico) reminding us that the Constitution didn't permit individual gun ownership until DC v. Heller (2008) How to tell someone's age in all you know is their name (538) or, the depths to which Nate Silver has sunk Cultural Literacy (NY Times) culture is now determined by whatever gets the most clicks? The Real Origins of the Religious Right (Politico) segregation, not abortion economics: Piketty redux Piketty's exhaustive inequality data turn out to be wrong (Financial Times) New Piketty critique has its own problems (NY Times) Piketty's first response and Piketty's detailed response Is Piketty Wrong? (Paul Krugman) not about the inequality conclusion _____________ The United States of Secrets (PBS Frontline: watch free on line this month) 3 hours of how the US spying apparatus violated the law and punished people who tried to warn the rest of us ---------------- The Case for Reparations (The Atlantic) 250 years of slavery. 90 years of Jim Crow. 60 years of separate but equal. Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole. The Case Against (National Review) Reparations are Workable and Affordable (Vox) ---------------- The Misinformed Case for Voter ID (Real Politics) and the real voter fraud The Future of the Internet to be decided in the next 4 months (The Nation) while the FCC figures out what to do about net neutrality Net Neutrality: Why Obama should demote the FCC chair (Politico) The dysfunctional Congress documented in 4 graphs (Washington Post) It's now the Canadian dream (NY Times) depressing data about opportunity in America |
Texas school system tries to poach NC teachers (WNCN) Houston schools' ad offers 25% more in pay than NC... but then you'd have to become a Texan NC legislature to teachers: you can have a pay increase or keep tenure, but not both (Raleigh N&O) the sobering data: check out the teacher pay scale; even with the 'pay raise', the base pay of the highest paid teachers never exceeds $50,000 even for 30+ years of experience.... who would want this job? NC: which way to the educational bottom? (Charlotte Observer) cut state funding for K-12 or for colleges? How your high- school grades predict your future salary (Washington Post) with charts & graphs The 1% isn't America's biggest source of inequality. College is. (Washington Post) due to the growing pay differential between those who go to college and those who don’t What NC teachers need: restored assistants, smaller classes, fewer tests (LtW, Raleigh N7O) and more pay Judge: NC legislature's attempt to withdraw teacher tenure is unconstitutional (Raleigh N&O) order now applies to the entire state; AG considers appeal and why it deserved to be ruled unconstitutional commencement Congratulations, class of 2014... you're totally screwed (Salon) the only people worse off than indebted grads: adjunct professors Who gets to graduate? (NY Times) rich kids, yeah; poor kids, not so much The Commencement Bigots (NY Times) or The Case for Protesting your Commencement Speaker (National Journal) which is worse: intolerance of bad deeds/ideas or intolerance of the right to protest (& free speech)? and perhaps the sanest response Warning labels on college courses? (OnPoint 1-hr radio) protecting the vulnerable or hypersensitivity run amok? |
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HD 162826: Sun's long-lost sibling identified? (McDonald Observatory) based on chemical composition & galactic orbit Ganymede: a multi-layer club sandwich of oceans & ice (Astronomy magazine) May guide to the 5 visible planets (Earth & Sky) Mars and Saturn are opposite the sun; Venus, a morning star; Jupiter, an evening one; Mercury's greatest eastern elongation on May 25 Earth Quiz: do you really know your planet? (Space) 10 questions |
star clusters form from the outside in (Earth & Sky) not inside out: stars on the outside are the oldest Sun's 4th closest companion is the coldest brown dwarf yet discovered (Sky & Telescope) 7.2 light years away 'Nearest' hypervelocity star found (Astronomy magazine) (and incidentally, an example of atrocious scientific writing: does 'quadrillion miles' mean anything to anybody? it's ok to average speed relative to earth and that relative to the galactic center to get the real speed? |
Geoff Marcy, Finder of New Worlds (NY Times) science profile exoplanet rotation detected for the first time (Nature) a β Pictoris giant planet rotating with 25 km/s equatorial speed, twice as large as Jupiter |
What made the Big Bang bang (Boston Globe) Alan Guth: the interview Simulated universe recreates evolution of the cosmos (Nature) with a 4-minute simulation clip Planck maps galaxy magnetic field using dust polarization (Astronomy magazine) result should help confirm (or not) the BICEP result Mystery at the galactic center (Scientific American) whatever is getting close to the black hole at the Milky Way center is still a puzzle Kavli roundtable on new evidence for inflation (Kavli) |
Element 117: hints at an island of stability? (Nature) the lifetime of these exotic elements is increasing Turbulent black hole's event horizon becomes fractal as it grows (New Scientist) White holes may exist (Nautil.us) but that doesn't mean that do Nautil.us' May 2014 issue is on Symmetry (Nautil.us) chapter 1 is on spherical cows (and Feynman diagrams) |
Wikipedia: where truth dies online (Chronicle of Higher Education) the title says it all The US has a Science problem (Washington Post) The Great Extinction (Chronicle of Higher Education) should be we concerned that "the total biomass of mammals raised for food vastly exceeds the biomass of all mammalian wildlife on the planet"? Artificial Life? First organism created with 6 letters (NY Times) 2nd biggest scientific discovery of the year? NC and the budget Watching the budget (Independent Weekly) Magical thinking led NC to a $445 million shortfall Watching drones, prayers, and unions (Independent Weekly) How will the legislature ruin North Carolina this year? unanswerable questions Snowden: why hasn't James Clapper been punished for lying to Congress? (Washington Post) Why there is no cure for the GOP's Benghazi Fever (Mother Jones) Why should you pay for Duke Energy's coal ash cleanup? (Independent Weekly) but you will be... and the regulators charged with deciding have ties to the utility industry, of course NC politics Bullying Judges in North Carolina (Daily Beast) have the Republicans and the US Chamber of Commerce no shame? Rock Bottom in NC (Raleigh N&O) by the Republican State 'Leadership' Committee Republican Senate candidates owe us more (Raleigh N&O) 'the people (of NC) have been cheated' foreign policy & Obama Stop whining, Mr. President (NY Times) things a president should never say Suck it up, Obama (Washington Post) Foreign Policy: It's not just about Obama (NY Times) it's the political paralysis What Americans really want in foreign policy (LA Times) Ukraine (Washington Post) the map of the moment What working people will vote for in November (Washington Post) The GOP'S comically inept Obamacare delusion (Salon) economics & Thomas Piketty, continued Why economics failed during the great recession (NY Times) the human catastrophe that resulted when politicians ignore the lessons of history Why the rich are rattled by Piketty (LA Times) "Our growing gaps in income and wealth are likely to continue for a long time, but they won't continue indefinitely. All that remains to determine is how — and how badly — they will end." and the Piketty critics: Thomas Piketty's "Capital" isn't holding up to scrutiny (Wall Street Journal) with the priceless quote: "Krugman is misformed" ... hilarious. Krugman has an Economics Nobel Prize... what does this guy have (besides a WSJ by-line?) physics Loopholes in the laws of physics (Quantum Frontiers) How Egyptians moved the pyramid stones without technology (Washington Post) the importance of understanding granular physics miscellaneous How to win 'Rock-Paper-Scissors' (almost) every time (Washington Post) The best years of your life are in your thirties (Washington Post) hope you knew it at the time How Steve Jobs (or was it Apple?) violated anti-trust laws (NY Times) and got away with it multiple times climate change Climate change: we have no solution (Washington Post) admitting the truth? The GOP can't ignore climate change (John Huntsman) oh yes it can (and is)! US climate has already changed (NY Times) Floods, severe storms, heat waves... with a map showing where (effects in NC are pretty non-existent) |
NC Court rules against withdrawal of tenure for teachers in Durham and Guilford counties (Raleigh N&O) so now, why not the whole state? teaching coding in grade school: scam or a useful 3rd language? (NY Times) as long as it doesn't come before learning basic math & English, social skills, playing outside, etc. the SNHU on-line racket (Chronicle of Higher Education) teaching without teaching NC Teacher #601 quits (LtW, Raleigh N&O) anyone care? NC has a 'reading problem' (Raleigh N&O) the Leandro case continues Blood from a stone? (Independent Weekly) Can Republicans squeeze a teacher pay raise from their denuded budget? (one GOP suggestion: let the really good teachers reach more students by using satellites) McCrory proposes small raises now, big changes in the future (Raleigh N&O) the 'changes' do not necessarily mean raises NC must be bold in raising teacher pay (Raleigh N&O) "The current state of teacher pay in NC defies logic by any measure, whether moral or market" NC Schools aren't broken -- yet (Raleigh N&O) "If we expect teachers to prepare and motivate students, we must place the highest priority on the recruitment, training, support, retention and inspiration of those teachers" .... duh College: the great Unequalizer (NY Times) with a remarkable put-down of the "less well-heeled students" (and, of course, insults for Thomas Piketty) Why we're still covering the scandal at UNC (Raleigh N&O) because UNC keeps not answering the questions North Carolina teachers: Patience vs. Injustice (LtE: Raleigh N&O) 7 years without a raise vs. tax cuts for the rich Common Core, pro and con, continued "the first day I was ashamed to be a teacher" (Washington Post) the
Core test contains
questions ...
that 95% ofhis students had no chance of solving Diane Ravitch on Common Core (former Assistant Sec of Education)) Common Core in NC: accountability on the quality of NC Schools (NC State Board of Education, chair) What Common Core opponents really fear (LtE: Raleigh N&O) a comparison of educational achievement across the nation ------------------------ The US educational system is failing (Washington Post) The OECD report on adult job skills: "In two of the three categories tested, numeracy and technological proficiency, young Americans -- ages 16 to 24 -- rank dead last" (and yes, Thomas Piketty gets a reference) |