Odds and Ends

March 23, 2011

WordPress was down most of yesterday, preventing me from posting.  Here are some of the topics I was considering for a post:

  • I finally saw The Social Network.  As always, I enjoyed Aaron Sorkin’s clever, rapid-fire dialog, but I couldn’t stop thinking about how creepy it was to write a fictionalized and unflattering account of real, living people.  There is no evidence that Mark Zuckerberg is the status and girl-craving jerk that Sorkin made him out to be, but there is plenty of evidence that Sorkin behaves that way.  I guess the film is really a fictionalized autobiography of Aaron Sorkin, except that Sorkin didn’t create a multi-billion dollar enterprise that tens of millions enjoy using and that has helped topple despots in the Middle East.
  • I saw that my fellow Manhattan Institute-refugee, Walter Olson, has a new book out on how law schools perpetuate a political ideology that gives more power to lawyers and government. Schools of Misrule sounds like it has a fascinating thesis except I suspect that the same argument could be made about almost every department at universities.  I can assure you that the social sciences are filled with people who sit around in their offices dreaming about how the rest of the world should be structured if only the world would listen to them.  I guess the difference is that law school grads are actually more likely to have to power to put their dreams into action.
  • Jim Stergios has a great post over at Pioneer comparing Bill Gates and Steve Jobs on their visions for education.  He writes:

So Bill Gates lets us all know what he really has in mind on standards and the liberal arts. In a speech to the National Governors Association in late February, he suggests that higher education spending be devoted largely to job-producing disciplines.

In his view we should drop funding at the higher ed level for the liberal arts, because there is not much economic impact/job creation impact from the liberal arts.

Compare that to Steve Jobs, who during his release of the iPad 2 (admittedly not the most successful launch I’ve seen of an Apple product), trumpeted the liberal arts.

Be sure to read the full thing because the quotations from Gates and Jobs are illuminating.

7 Comments | higher education, instructional reform | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene

Now The Wheels Are Really Coming Off the National Standards Train

November 17, 2010

Back in March I predicted, prematurely, that the wheels were coming off of the national standards train.  Andy Rotherham had declared that the adoption of national standards was “close to a done deal,” but then the Wall Street Journal came out with an editorial strongly opposing national standards.

I thought that would derail the Gates-fueled and Obama/Duncan enforced train, but it did not.  As it turns out, states in the midst of a severe budgetary pinch are inclined to promise a lot in exchange for federal and Gates dollars now.

But all of those state promises to revise their standards, change their curriculum, change their professional development, and adopt new tests were all about steps that would occur far in the future.  Now that the federal money was already handed out and new money is unlikely to be forthcoming given the midterm election, the states may change their tune.  The states are like the kind of person who, when you stop buying her all of those flowers and expensive dinners, may not keep telling you how handsome and smart you are — and the wedding plans are probably in jeopardy.

To see how the tide is turning, check out this piece by Jim Stergios of the Pioneer Institute in the Boston Globe.  As Jim writes:

With Rick Perry said to be a shoo-in for the head of the Republican Governors Association, the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), which was one of a handful of lead groups pushing states to adopt national standards, may find itself in deep trouble. In fact, Perry, as the head of the RGA, may force the National Governors Association, which together the CCSSO, Achieve Inc., and the Gates Foundation, acted as cheerleaders for national standards, to revisit its position in support of national standards….

The opening that Governor Perry has on this issue is obvious and rumor has it that he is thinking very seriously about actions that reassert state control over the education agenda (and leverage the RGA to do so). The clearest place for Perry to begin is with the dozens of states that did not participate in Race to the Top. There are also key states that did participate, and in the case of New Jersey, California and Indiana even adopted the national standards, but did not win any RTT money.

The key states to watch are California, Indiana, Minnesota, New Jersey, Texas and Virginia. In addition to being states that either did not adopt the national standards, or adopted them and did not win federal funds, they have one additional and important commonality among them: They have had higher standards than most other states in the nation.

I think Jim Stergios is spot-on.  And as I’ve written before, getting agreement on national standards is almost politically impossible given that we are a large and diverse country with legitimate and competing visions of what schools should look like.  You could get states to pledge their support but as we are now seeing, getting the details in place is inevitably very difficult.

8 Comments | instructional reform, politics | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene