We might be on to something here, people . . .
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With Treme, Blues at the Equinox
Is anyone out there watching the final season of Treme, David Simon’s underappreciated series about New Orleans and, by extension, us?
Since its debut in 2010, which followed perhaps too closely on the heels of Simon’s undisputed masterpiece, The Wire, most of the comments about Treme have focused on what it is not.
It’s not thrilling. It’s not suspenseful. It’s not exciting.
It’s true – Treme is not really any of those things. Then again, unlike just about every other drama on television, it’s also not about drugs, or counter-terrorism, or organized crime.
Read More »Understanding How Poverty Affects the Brain
Could the behavior of shoppers in New Jersey and sugarcane farmers in India tell us something useful about the challenges our poorest students face? Educator Zac Chase, writing a guest post for my Of, By, For blog at EdWeek, thinks so . . .
Read More »Rethinking School Boundaries
Now that DC is taking up the delicate question of whether its boundary lines for neighborhood schools needs revisiting — the first time they’ve done so since 1968 — it’s worth thinking through the issue with them. This morning, I was part of a public radio conversation that featured DC Deputy Mayor Abigail Smith and […]
Read More »Planet of the Technocrats
There’s a great book out by Harvard’s Michael Sandel on the moral limits of markets. But Sandel’s book also contains a lot of interesting information about incentives, and the ways our use of them has both grown and revised the traditional economic thinking that began with Adam Smith’s original 1776 notion of an “invisible hand.”
Read More »This is what good teaching looks like
(not to mention why arts integration is such a good idea . . .)
Read More »Why We Need to Look Back — and Ahead
There are two different articles in today’s New York Times that I would consider must reading for anyone interested in better understanding who we are, who we have been, and who we may become. The first, “Obama and the Debt,” outlines Princeton history professor Sean Wilentz’s interpretations of the current crisis, and of its Constitutional […]
Read More »Why urban education is a rigged game
According to Dylan Garity, who breaks it down at the National Poetry Slam. Listen up.
Read More »Want to Get Smarter? Be More Childlike.
Interesting piece on NPR this morning in which Shankra Vedantam reviews some of the recent research in neuroscience.
Read More »DC’s Plan to Assess Early Childhood Programs: Thumbs Up or Thumbs Down?
In case you missed it, the Public Charter Schools Board of DC has proposed a common framework for assessing the quality of all preschool and lower elementary programs. The original proposal sparked arguments for and against the plan; led to a petition campaign of protest; and anchored a lively hourlong discussion on public radio. Lots of people wrote the board to share their own ideas and feedback, and, earlier this week, the Board unanimously approved a revised policy.
What did the PCSB get right, and where is its plan still lacking?
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