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Sherman Dorn

  • Are central Florida schools flouting Florida law limiting test-prep?

    I have heard from teachers and students in three area districts (Hillsborough, Pinellas, and Hernando counties) that secondary teachers in some subjects are being ordered to spend the first 10 minutes of class suspending the curriculum and teaching material from another class. In the case of two counties (Pinellas and [...]
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    Posted: December 05, 2009, 10:35am EST
    by sdorn

  • Great day in physics!

    Last Tuesday was the 150th anniversary of the publication of The Origin of Species, and today it's the turn for physics. Yeah, I know: you have already probably heard about the record collision at the Large Hadron Collider announced this morning. But that's not what I'm talking about. It's my' [...]
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    Posted: November 30, 2009, 11:01am EST
    by sdorn

  • Happy Thanksgiving

    When I was a young(er) adult, Elizabeth and I would visit her maternal grandparents for Thanksgiving. There were some significant differences between those meals and the Thanksgiving traditions I grew up with. First, Elizabeth's relatives could cook, and while my mother is a wonderful human being and could make sure [...]
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    Posted: November 26, 2009, 5:43am EST
    by sdorn

  • My phone number is more accurate than your research

    One minor irritation while I've been an editor this past half-decade has been the occasional slight sign that a manuscript author dumped the entire output of SPSS or SAS into a table, complete with 10 digits of specificity. Ten digits! Yes, these folks who compute regression coefficients, p-values, and R2' [...]
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    Posted: November 25, 2009, 10:20am EST
    by sdorn

  • Race to the Top: review, revise, redux

    I am in California this weekend for the Social Science History Association annual meeting, where we get to talk about Maris Vinovskis's book on the last quarter century of school reform, and since one of my copanelists Saturday morning is Jennifer Jennings, I finally get to meet the sociologist-formerly-known-as-Eduwonkette in [...]
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    Posted: November 12, 2009, 7:41pm EST
    by sdorn

  • Methodoxology

    My graduate students are reading Jeff Henig right now, and it appears that few editorial boards or other advocates have taken his argument in Spin Cycle seriously, at least from reactions to the latest sets of charter-school reports issued by think tanks. Ritualistic incantations at the publication of the Brand [...]
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    Posted: November 12, 2009, 7:38pm EST
    by sdorn

  • Sometimes, negotiations are tough slogging because they're tough

    Whether in reference to the Obama administration, the AFT, academic administrators at some universities, Iran, or some other entity, my personal news reading and listening in the last week has been full of finger-pointing about reneging on deals, backing away from apparent deals, undermining good trends, falsifying promising hints, or [...]
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    Posted: November 11, 2009, 11:39am EST
    by sdorn

  • Incentives for high school curriculum change

    Leslie Maxwell writes a short and solid blog entry (and maybe a story later this week) about the politics of college admissions at San Diego State University. Specifically, SDSU's move to eliminate a preferential admissions policy for high school students from San Diego has sparked a debate about perceived obligations [...]
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    Posted: November 10, 2009, 5:00am EST
    by sdorn

  • Avoid the interrupting, comma

    One more bit of advice to students this afternoon: If you wish to write forceful sentences, do not be a writer, who places a comma between the subject, and verb of a sentence, nor between parts of a compound verb or noun with, only two items, nor in the middle of, a [...]
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    Posted: November 07, 2009, 4:42pm EST
    by sdorn

  • Do not use dictionary definitions in papers, unless you're writing a paper about dictionaries

    A word of advice to all students: in almost every subject, no matter what some teacher told you years ago, do not ever waste your time or words repeating a dictionary definition in an academic paper. Whatever Mr. Johnson's and Mr. Webster's successors wrote down is descriptive, not authoritative, and [...]
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    Posted: November 07, 2009, 3:31pm EST
    by sdorn

  • Issues in electronic grade reports

    This morning's article in USA Today on electronic grade reports is a reminder of a few important facts in evaluating technology use in schools:Ease of use (in jargon, "usability") is critical to adoption. The systems that existed a few years ago were (and many still are) clunky and hard to [...]
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    Posted: November 06, 2009, 8:32am EST
    by sdorn

  • Election results -- eh.

    Andy Rotherham has a tempting interpretation of election results (and their effect on federal education politics), but I'm guessing he's just suffering from living in Virginia this morning. Normally, it's a very nice state, but I've seen some pretty-well-expected "darned my state is going down the tubes" messages from Va. acquaintances [...]
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    Posted: November 04, 2009, 10:56am EST
    by sdorn

  • Read Cliff Adelman's new report

    Cliff Adelman's brand new report on international comparisons in higher-ed attainment (hat tip) is a must-read. I just wish I had enough time to read everything I should, including this item. (My reading lists: want to, need to, should have read three months ago.)I therefore assign you, my dear reader, [...]
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    Posted: November 04, 2009, 6:21am EST
    by sdorn

  • Ready-made dissertation topic on local school politics

    Anyone looking for a dissertation topic on school policy or politics can now rest easy: read the Palm Beach Post's description of a local reform effort that blew up in the face of a superintendent. You've got everything in there from the data-driven mantra to parental backlash to odd bedfellows' [...]
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    Posted: November 01, 2009, 9:05am EST
    by sdorn

  • Do Times reporters know the difference between percentages and raw numbers?

    I suspect the following is an unfortunate placement by the reporter on a story about record high percentages of young adults in college (with an emphasis on percentages):"What's behind this," Mr. [Richard] Fry added, "is that we have the biggest pool of young adults we've ever had who've finished high" [...]
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    Posted: October 30, 2009, 7:03am EDT
    by sdorn

  • Florida Student Group Fights for Zombie Rights

    Tallahassee, Florida (Dissociated Press) -- At an early-morning press conference in the state capital, five zombies attending Florida state universities announced the formation of the new organization Florida Upbeat Zephyr Zombies (FUZZ) to fight for zombie rights. "There are organizations that fight for the rights of students to be free" [...]
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    Posted: October 30, 2009, 6:36am EDT
    by sdorn

  • Channeling Jerry Bracey on "proficiency": it's political, not scientific

    One of the late Jerry Bracey's hobbyhorses was the pretense that the NAEP achievement level labels were scientific, as he argued in 1999: "The standards have generally been the object of scorn and derision from the psychometric community." He was fond of quoting the 1999 report on NAEP proficiency levels, [...]
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    Posted: October 29, 2009, 2:02pm EDT
    by sdorn

  • Why unions need competent administrators on the other side

    Dean Dad neatly explains why Southwestern College's leaders aren't even competent Machiavellian administrators. While I've occasionally heard from people that the best union recruiting tool is a horrid manager, life is more complicated. Yes, there are threshold effects of managerial incompetence and cruelty on organizing campaigns, but for an already-recognized [...]
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    Posted: October 28, 2009, 12:52am EDT
    by sdorn

  • In no language either is there the phrase "as quiet as an airport"

    Heard on the Philadelphia International Airport intercom. Or at least the small bits I could "understand"...THIS IS A BOARDING ANNOUNCEMENT FOR PASSENGER GRISENSD PLEASE GO TO TRUMP ATE FERRITINOUS PAGING WE NEED YOU AT GATE WYNNEWOOD NARBUHTH ARDMORE HAVERFORD BRYN MAWR ROSEMONTCODE PHILLIES WAITING RAIN DELAY HAS WITHDRAWN FROM DANCING WITH THESTARS SEEN [...]
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    Posted: October 25, 2009, 3:57pm EDT
    by sdorn

  • Ted Sizer's push

    It had instant credibility to the vast majority of readers who all probably shifted uncomfortably while reading certain passages, recognizing themselves. And the terms that came out of that project...Classroom treaties.Tell me if you don't remember an entire class wheedling a teacher or two to change an assignment, to lower' [...]
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    Posted: October 25, 2009, 8:14am EDT
    by sdorn

  • Duncan's talk at Teachers College: first impressions

    Some quick impressions of the text of Arne Duncan's speech at Teachers College today: Historical quibble: Duncan said he was speaking at a place where "giants like John Dewey played such a formative role." No, he didn't, or at least not at Teachers College. When Dewey moved from Chicago to Columbia, he moved [...]
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    Posted: October 23, 2009, 12:17am EDT
    by sdorn

  • A gadfly remembered: Jerry Bracey

    An e-mail from Kevin Welner yesterday announced Jerry Bracey's death Monday night. I only met him a handful of times in the past 20 years of his persistent, indefatigable efforts to poke holes in every public report or news story he saw as an effort to demonize public schooling. His' [...]
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    Posted: October 22, 2009, 12:53am EDT
    by sdorn

  • The curious case of Larry Summers

    Okay, maybe I can't let well enough alone on economics. About a decade from now, someone will have both the material and distance to write a fabulous biography of Larry Summers. On one level, he is a brilliant economist. At another level, he has been a total MF, and at' [...]
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    Posted: October 18, 2009, 9:45am EDT
    by sdorn

  • An historian reads the business section (with apologies to John Allen Paulos)

    I do not generally comment on economic matters, but I think historians of education can say something productive about the current myths plodding around the internet about the stimulus and the non-bank sector of the banking industry. First, some of the current discourse: Sean Snaith, an economist at the University [...]
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    Posted: October 17, 2009, 8:35pm EDT
    by sdorn

  • New grading routine attempt... and why Blackboard 8 continues to be horrible

    I need to crack down on myself today and spend all of it grading and doing other teaching-related tasks. Now that I have figured out an awful, awkward, arguably arbitrary workaround for an incredibly stupid usability problem with the Blackboard 8 Grade Center,* I know how students can access feedback [...]
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    Posted: October 17, 2009, 10:18am EDT
    by sdorn

  • Don't exercise: you'll destroy the world

    If you had asked me this morning what I expected from the latest round of NAEP math scores and what was going on in DCPS, I would have told you to expect NAEP math scores to increase at a snail's pace with loads of arguments about what that meant, that [...]
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    Posted: October 14, 2009, 9:19pm EDT
    by sdorn

  • The comparability fly in the Ouchi/principal-autonomy ointment

    Yesterday from a "stakeholders" meeting (I think at the USDOE), Charlie Barone tweets,Richard Laine of Wallace Foundation: forthcoming Rand study will show [principal] autonomy in hiring a key factor in student achievement.I've been expecting something like this for a while, not because I'm connected to a RAND insider (I'm not)' [...]
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    Posted: October 14, 2009, 12:19pm EDT
    by sdorn

  • R!

    A graduate student in biostats here is willing to tutor me in R (the open-source equivalent of S-Plus). Yes, faculty need to learn additional things, and sometimes that requires tutoring/coaching. For me, those realms include music, martial arts, and now new stats packages. And because my college wants guinea pigs [...]
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    Posted: October 14, 2009, 11:17am EDT
    by sdorn

  • Why you don't always need a statewide charter authorizer

    I don't understand the obsession some people have with multiple charter-school authorizers. In Florida, it has always been the county school board since the charter-school law was first approved in the mid-90s. A few years ago in Florida, the legislature decided for some reason that not enough proposals were being' [...]
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    Posted: October 14, 2009, 10:37am EDT
    by sdorn

  • News item: Boy Scout suspended for being prepared

    The suspension of Zacharie Christie is the latest tomfoolery in zero-sense discipline policies, because the tyke decided to bring his Boy Scout cutlery to school. Next: Fox News special on the Evil Spork. And this brings to mind a parody of medieval-fandom-society "weapons at the door" policies: A Bard was [...]
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    Posted: October 12, 2009, 10:57am EDT
    by sdorn

  • "Timmy's legislator let him do it!"

    I don't know what I'm more disgusted at, last week's dismissal of official-misconduct charges against Florida Rep. Ray Sansom, or news that something very similar has been happening in Virginia with state Senator Tommy Norment and the College of William and Mary and state Delegate Phil Hamilton and Old Dominion [...]
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    Posted: October 12, 2009, 10:35am EDT
    by sdorn

  • One Blog Schoolhouse: the PDF

    Should've been done a few months ago, but if you want to read the entire text of One Blog Schoolhouse, it's now available as a nonprinting PDF. (I recommend that you click the "PDF" link in brackets, since I don't know if scribd will convert a nonprinting PDF.) The entire [...]
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    Posted: October 10, 2009, 10:53am EDT
    by sdorn

  • Outside cultural studies classes, "Love Boat" != instructional material

    Apparently a University of Wisconsin-Madison business professor used state funds to purchase DVDs of various television series, including Love Boat, Family Ties, and Get Smart. (Hat tip.) The explanation was that he would use clips "to illustrate aspects of business and management." Reality check: I use cartoons in lectures. I [...]
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    Posted: October 09, 2009, 10:38am EDT
    by sdorn

  • And now, a break from the normal type of entry on this blog

    Wow (backup for citation, since the Nobel's servers are slammed right now). In the perennial struggle to decide whether the Nobel Peace Prize should be a Courage Award or a Behavioral Reinforcement for Moving in the Right Direction, the Nobel Peace Prize Committee used the 2009 award for the latter. [...]
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    Posted: October 09, 2009, 8:47am EDT
    by sdorn

  • First, find me a box of cereal that squirms and drips snot in winter

    Congratulations to former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, who knows a critical rule of politics: declare victory whenever you can, no matter whether you were right. I am quite serious about his political acumen: his push of a system that assigned letter grades to schools was ingenious politics. And Bush deserves [...]
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    Posted: October 08, 2009, 11:07pm EDT
    by sdorn

  • Dozens of Veblens, a handful of Heckmans, not one Keynes

    Skimming the Ryan Lizza portrait of Larry Summers, reading Paul Krugman's focus on the size of the stimulus, and listening to Krugman's The Return of Depression Economics while driving around Tampa this week makes it clear to me that outside the bubble that is Fox News and talk radio, Krugman, [...]
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    Posted: October 06, 2009, 2:11am EDT
    by sdorn

  • We could do without all the excitement, thank you

    I was off campus by 12:30 yesterday afternoon, so I didn't have all the fun of several reports of gunmen on the USF campus in Tampa (student-run USF Oracle, Tampa Tribune, St. Petersburg Times, CNN). As the press representative of the campus police noted, you can't ignore called-in threats or [...]
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    Posted: October 06, 2009, 1:59am EDT
    by sdorn

  • Power outage

    Some things you just have to laugh at. I charged out of the house this morning to get the car's oil changed and head to my office to chug through teaching and other work stuff. In the last five hours, I've spent half of the time waiting for the car' [...]
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    Posted: October 04, 2009, 2:36pm EDT
    by sdorn

  • Child murder, Chicago style

    Chicago teacher Deborah Lynch pointed out in a Sun-Times opinion piece yesterday that one of the Chicago schools' "turnaround targets" this fall has been Fenger High School, near the gang fight that led to Derrion Albert's death and the school where she implies many of the combatants attend. (Hat tip/alternative' [...]
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    Posted: October 03, 2009, 8:53am EDT
    by sdorn

  • Pausing to find my bearings

    It's been one heck of a month. As I noted a few weeks ago, I had a death in the family at the beginning of September, but for some reason I did not mention in that entry that my mother-in-law was the family member who had died. Because my wife [...]
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    Posted: October 02, 2009, 9:58am EDT
    by sdorn

  • Whitmire and Rotherham fall prey to faux-trend fallacy

    If I were a union activist without an historical perspective, I'd say ouch with Richard Whitmire and Andy Rotherham's WSJ opinion piece proclaiming a trend in news reporting on education and teachers unions. Or, to put it another way, there's an op-ed in Rupert Murdoch's new plaything proclaiming that a' [...]
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    Posted: October 02, 2009, 9:29am EDT
    by sdorn

  • The Child has arrived!

    This week I received my contributor's copy of The Child: An Encyclopedic Companion. I have a single entry (on dropouts), and it's clear there's lots of good stuff in it on a range of topics, including a substantial section with historical and social-science perspectives on families. I think the cost [...]
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    Posted: September 30, 2009, 11:42am EDT
    by sdorn

  • Looking forward to reading midterms

    A few minutes ago, I finished preparing the midterm for my undergraduate history of education class, and I am looking forward to reading student responses.For this semester, I decided to write a midterm that was entirely focused on historical documents in the form of primary-source identification items. The task for [...]
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    Posted: September 30, 2009, 11:01am EDT
    by sdorn

  • St. Louis University

    I am certainly not the first one to point this out, but St. Louis University has shot itself in the foot by apparently attempting to cancel a David Horowitz speech. Its only (non-saving) grace is that it explicitly has a "we get to decide if your desired speaker says what" [...]
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    Posted: September 29, 2009, 7:06am EDT
    by sdorn

  • Students can study more than one subject at a time

    The future of our nation and world depend on our citizens' understanding of both how they interact with each other and how they interact with the natural world [emphasis added].--FSU physicist Paul Cottle, responding to a critic who thinks we should be more worried about civics knowledgeAs an historian, I' [...]
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    Posted: September 24, 2009, 11:17am EDT
    by sdorn

  • Galileoscope constructed

    It's been a frustrating week in some ways, so I took an hour off to look at the Galileoscope package that arrived a few days ago. Could a non-science person who is only moderately handy put a $20 telescope with supposedly great optical features together?I guess he could. And then [...]
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    Posted: September 18, 2009, 2:51pm EDT
    by sdorn

  • Serious science toy for the International Year of Astronomy: the Galileoscope

    Galileoscope (not the ones in my house)I wasn't going to mention it here until I got my hands on it, but the two Galileoscopes I ordered in the summer finally made their way to my house yesterday, so I can now tell you all: they're shipping! They're real! One is' [...]
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    Posted: September 17, 2009, 1:42pm EDT
    by sdorn

  • In honor of rivalries

    This afternoon my son will be on a bus with his marching band for a "road" game where his school's football team is playing my daughter's school's football team. Minor irony: I can't pick him up at the end of the game because he needs to go back with the' [...]
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    Posted: September 17, 2009, 6:57am EDT
    by sdorn

  • Pork-barrel airplane hangars or science?

    Florida State University physics professor Paul Cottle has a wonderful way of comparing the state's science-education needs with what the state legislature's pork-barrel politics has produced in the recent past: think about the $6 million cost of the airplane hangar former House Speaker Ray Sansom stuffed into the budget a [...]
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    Posted: September 16, 2009, 11:26am EDT
    by sdorn

  • And now, Harvard digs deep in the public interest--NOT!

    Is there anyone else who read of Harvard's new tuition-free doctorate in ed leadership supported by the Wallace Foundation and first thought, "Oh, that's in competition with the Broad leadership indoctrination inbreeding mutual backscratching society training"? I know what faculty and administrators thought: if there's a (reputational) market for a [...]
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    Posted: September 15, 2009, 8:37am EDT
    by sdorn
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