Monthly Archives: October 2021

Does competition from private and charter schools improve the performance of traditional public schools? Or make the traditional public schools worse? The answer might depend on what you mean by “performance”. Last week, three education economics scholars published in Education … Continue reading →

Update: The pre-college educator session of invited talks has been broken up into segments by meeting organizers. Denise Newsome will be speaking at 9 am on Saturday, November 20. Carlos Villa will be speaking at 11:00 am that day, and … Continue reading →

It has become sexy to dismiss the value of a bachelor’s degree. “You don’t need a bachelor’s degree to land a high-paying job” says a headline on the National Public Radio website. Underneath that, the story says: A new study … Continue reading →

In my Studio (SCALE-UP-style) Physics course, face-to-face learning this fall has proven to be far superior to last year’s online offering. Last year, I despaired that there were students who were not succeeding in my online course who would have … Continue reading →

A few weeks ago, I learned that New York City’s public school system tests 4-year-olds to determine if they should be admitted into the system’s “gifted and talented” program for elementary school students. I learned about it because the outgoing … Continue reading →

After a particular group of five students struggled in my online class last fall, a staff member in a program run by my university’s central administration agreed to talk with these students so that perhaps I could learn something from … Continue reading →

Does high school preparation in physics matter when students arrive in a college physics classroom like mine? I often quote the statistic that students who have not taken a high school physics class earn, on the average, a full letter … Continue reading →