Entries for Kevin Schofield

A New Use for Used Textbooks [A New Use for Used Textbooks]

kevinsch — Fri, 20 Oct 2006 20:49:00 GMT

An Oklahoma candidate for state superintendent of education has proposed putting a thick used textbook under every desk to use in self-defense in case a shooter comes into the classroom. He even created a video where he tests the idea by shooting textbooks with various kinds of guns.

Watch the whole video. It's worth it. This guy might soon be in charge of the education system for the whole state. I was amazed at how casual this whole group of people is with the guns. The only thing they did right was to keep the kids way in the back (though at the end he asks the kids if they want to shoot any of the textbooks).

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No More Goofing Off [No More Goofing Off]

kevinsch — Thu, 05 Oct 2006 00:45:00 GMT

According to Inside Higher Ed, the University of Washington this year revoked admission to 18 students who goofed off the second half of their senior year and saw a significant downturn in their grades.

Good for them.

I remember hearing that empty threat when I was a senior, that I needed t keep my grades up or they might revoke my admission... but this is the first time I've ever heard of a universit following through.

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Stealing IP to Stop Plagiarism [Stealing IP to Stop Plagiarism]

kevinsch — Sun, 24 Sep 2006 12:29:00 GMT

The Washington Post has a great article about turnitin.com, a company that helpd teachers check student papers to see whether they are plagiarizing.

Some students, teachers and administrators have a problem with this, in that they believe it's the equivalent of mandatory drug testing for all students. What ever happened to "innocent until proven guilty," they ask.

But the real problem with turnitin.com is that all papers submitted to the service automatically get added to their database and stored forever so that future submissions can be checked against them. And they do this without the students' permission.

Isn't that theft of intellectual property? Isn't it minimally hypocritical, and probably illegal, for turnitin.com to do that?

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How College Admissions Works [How College Admissions Works]

kevinsch — Sun, 17 Sep 2006 20:46:34 GMT

The fantastic site HowStuffWorks.com has posted an article on "How College Admissions Works."

As always with HowStuffWorks, it's a high-level explanation but extensively researched, including interviews with the head of admissions at Duke University.

This is a must-read for every high school student who aspires to go on to college. Lots of good kinks, too to background materials including a bunch of articles about the evolution of the SAT and how it's treated by universities today.

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Is the American Higher Education System the Best in the World? [Is the American Higher Education System the Best in the World?]

kevinsch — Fri, 08 Sep 2006 03:46:16 GMT

USA Today has an article today about a new report, comparing the American higher education system with its counterparts in other parts of the world. It draws alarming conclusions from the disparity between the number of college graduates in the 25-34 age bracket, vs. 35-64 year olds. In the 35-64 range, the US has the highest percentage worldwide of college grads. In the 25-34 range, we're #7.

They suggest that a major culprit though perhaps not the only one) is affordability of a college education.

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NCLB: The Ivory Soap of Laws [NCLB: The Ivory Soap of Laws]

kevinsch — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 01:39:39 GMT

The No Child Left Behind Act is coming up for renewal by Congress. Much debate is ensuing about changes that need to be made.

However, Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings has gone on record saying that she thinks the act is "99.9% pure." Meaning, no changes should be made.

A shame, really -- I was starting to actually accumulate some respect for her for not being a complete Bush toady.

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Expensive Textbooks [Expensive Textbooks]

kevinsch — Wed, 30 Aug 2006 04:23:19 GMT

Inside Higher Ed has an article this week on a flap between the Student Public Interest Research Group and a textbook publishers' association. PIRG claimed that college students spend an average of $900 annually on textbooks. As the textbook publisher association pointed out, they were misquoting a study that found that students pay an average of $900 annually for textbooks and fees. The textbooks' share of this, the publishers correct, is only $650.

ONLY $650???? Yikes.

Then the finger-pointing ensues. Is it the fault of the professors, who are the ones who choose and require the expensive books? The publishers who set wholesale prices? The bookstores, who regulalry mark up the retail price up to 50% over the sugggested retail price?

And the most important question: is there any alternative?

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Threads in Computer Science [Threads in Computer Science]

kevinsch — Mon, 14 Aug 2006 03:14:11 GMT

The computer science department at Georgia Tech has done a fairly radical re-work of its curriculum to try to change the field's reputation and attract more students to the program. A key part of the new program is to emphasize "threads" that let people choose a set of courses that focus on a particular application of computer: gaming, the sciences, etc. They think this does a better job of supporting interdisciplinary work, and will keep people focused and excited.

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Is there a quality difference between private and public schools? [Is there a quality difference between private and public schools?]

kevinsch — Mon, 14 Aug 2006 03:13:17 GMT

Last month the Department of Education released a new report trying to determine if there was a substantial difference between private and public schools in terms of the quality of learning.

Here's the abstract of the report:

This study compares mean 2003 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) reading and mathematics scores of public and private schools in 4th and 8th grades, statistically controlling for individual student characteristics (such as gender, race/ethnicity, disability status, identification as an English language learner) and school characteristics (such as school size, location, and the composition of the student body). In grades 4 and 8, using unadjusted mean scores, students in private schools scored significantly higher than students in public schools for both reading and mathematics. But when school means were adjusted in the HLM analysis, the average for public schools was significantly higher than the average for private schools for grade 4 mathematics and not significantly different for reading. At grade 8, the average for private schools was significantly higher than the average for public schools in reading but not significantly different for mathematics. Comparisons were also carried out between types of sectarian schools. In grade 4, Catholic and Lutheran schools were compared separately to public schools. For both reading and mathematics, the results were similar to those based on all private schools. In grade 8, Catholic, Lutheran, and Conservative Christian schools were each compared to public schools. For Catholic and Lutheran schools for both reading and mathematics, the results were again similar to those based on all private schools. For Conservative Christian schools, the average adjusted school mean in reading was not significantly different from that of public schools. In mathematics, the average adjusted school mean for Conservative Christian schools was significantly lower than that of public schools.

This is a very interesting study. What makes it doubly interesting is that a few days later Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings was out stumping for a new voucher program to allow public school students to move to private schools and take public funds with them. USA Today reports on this, including that Secretary Spelling hadn't read the report yet and had to admit that she had only become aware of it by reading accounts in the newspaper.

Well, at least for once it's very obvious what's going on: the Bush administration is dead-set on pushing through a voucher program as part of its political agenda, regardless of whether it's in the best interest of students. It isn't even interested in the facts.

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Should Teachers Blog? [Should Teachers Blog?]

kevinsch — Mon, 31 Jul 2006 22:18:19 GMT

In Shanghai, according to this report, ten percent of the teachers blog as a way to increase and improve communication and interaction with their students. Unfortunately, the students aren't reciprocating -- the teachers are having a very difficult time getting their students to comment or otherwise participate.

What do people think: are blogs a useful tool for teachers? What should teachers expect in terms of student participation? Any best practices to share?

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Commission on Higher Ed draft report [Commission on Higher Ed draft report]

kevinsch — Wed, 28 Jun 2006 01:15:50 GMT

This week the Commission on Higher Education, set up by the Department of Education, issued a draft of their widely-anticipated report on the state of higher education in the United States.

It doesn't pull a lot of punches. The commission registers a litany of complaints, which fall into four broad categories:

- Access. Access to higher education is unduly limited by inadequate preparation, financial and information barriers, and a fundamental disconnect between high school and college curricula.

- Affordability. Building on access complaints, college education costs have risen at a rate far outpacing inflation, and financial aid processes have become too cumbersome.

- Quality. Despite a high rate of expenditure, undergraduate education outcomes are worse now than 50 years ago.

- Accountability. The "customers" of higher ed (the students and their parents, not to mention the taxpayers) have no useful information or metrics to compare and constrast institutions' ability to deliver a quality education.

A lot of this is common criticism, and their recommendations are in many cases very general. I found a couple of interesting points in the draft report though:

The commission was highly critical of universities who, in their eyes, place too much focus on research at the expense of teaching. While there's certianly some merit to this, it fails to acknowledge that university research is also graduate student education. No doubt, though, that undergraduate education is super important. It does bring back an idea I hear tossed around frequently that in this day and age we ought to do a better job of leveraging great lectures by broadcasting them to more campuses (either live or pre-recorded). A central set of world-class lectures would free up instructors to focus on more productive uses of their time: more individualized instruction time, and research. And it would improve the over quality of lectures on many college campuses.

The commission also points out that many of the best colleges and universities have no incentive whatsoever to keep costs down -- they can simply raise tuition. They speculate as to what would happen if a reward system would be put in place that actually rewarded fiscal prudence and cost-efficiency in higher education.

As I read their discussion about accounatiblity, I was very worried that they would propose the equivalent of NCLB for high ed. foctunately, they stopped shy of that mark. I read into their remarks that they believe that higher education is more of an open market, and that market-based reform will work if there is sufficient transparency and information to make it reasonably efficient. An interesting philosophy.

This report is intended to be the start of a debate. Much of it will probably go nowhere; the US higher education system is such a mishmash of community colleges, public universities, and private institutions that it will be difficult to drive any significant broad change. But it's a good step nonetheless to have some smart people articulate many of the key issues.

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New Education Trend: Omega-3? [New Education Trend: Omega-3?]

kevinsch — Sun, 11 Jun 2006 18:38:09 GMT

I'm over in the UK this week, and in this morning's paper there was a fascinating report about a study giving Omega-3 supplements to children that seemed to dramatically boost the children's ability to concentrate.

If it checks out, we might be hearing more about this in the U.S. soon...

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Marketing a University [Marketing a University]

kevinsch — Fri, 09 Jun 2006 19:58:32 GMT

Inside Higher Ed has a super interesting, in-depth article discussing Penn State's aggressive marketing campaign which tries to remake the school's image as "chic." They did a large spread in a fashion/style magazine; they cut a deal with MTV on a TV show, and they've been advertising on television.

The comments ont he article are very bipolar; some folks (including alumni) think this is great, whicle others bemoan the superficiality of the marketing campaign. It's certainly producing results, though, as Penn State's applications are up this year.

Competition for students has become quite intense among the top-tier universities, and I wonder if all of the schools will feel the need to follow suit in this style-savvy and media-savvy environment today.

But where do you draw the line? What is appropriate for marketing a university?

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Alex is Going to MIT [Alex is Going to MIT]

kevinsch — Tue, 06 Jun 2006 04:06:01 GMT

If you're a follower of Doonesbury, you know that Alex has been wrestling with where to go to college to study engineering. Gary Trudeau decided to let readers vote on doonesbury.com for either RPI, MIT or Cornell.

What ensued, in hinfsight, should have been expected. MIT and RPI students both built automated scripts to stuff the ballot box. This created a bunch of work for the Doonesbury webmasters, but in the end the fended off the most egregious ballot stuffing.

Cornell, sadly, was in the middle of finals and wasn't quite as motivated to stoop to unethical means to win the vote (though their alumni office tried to get the word out to alums). For this, Trudeau gave them the Congeniality Award.

But he also had to admit that using various means to stuff the ballot box was not actually prohibited... and these are engineers, and so is Alex. So it seemed like fair game. At the end of the day, MIT got the most votes in, so that's where Alex is headed.

You can read the entire account here.

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Just When You Thought There Were Enough Journals... [Just When You Thought There Were Enough Journals...]

kevinsch — Wed, 31 May 2006 19:46:14 GMT

I'm constantly amazed at the scholarly journals that exist out there. Here's a new one: the International Journal of Motorcycle Studies, which is about the "cultural phenomenon of motorcycling" and not about mechanics.

The authors' bios show an interesting diversity, including faculty of history, anthropology and graphic design.

It's actually interesting reading, though I don't think you'll see too many citations to the IJMS on academic CV's. At least not until you see a few Departments of Motorcycle Studies on university campuses. And I'm not holding my breath for that.

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The Education of a CIO [The Education of a CIO]

kevinsch — Fri, 26 May 2006 19:56:25 GMT

InfoWorld has an interesting article about the intersection of IT education and business education.

Which raises the question: what is the proper education for a CIO? It also raises the follow-on question: once they have the formal education, what's the idea path that someone should follow inside of a company in order to rise to the position of CIO?

Both boil down to the same question: what's the right balance between knowledge about how the business runs and knowledge about IT that will make someone a successful CIO?

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Science Scores: Up, Steady and Down [Science Scores: Up, Steady and Down]

kevinsch — Fri, 26 May 2006 03:39:55 GMT

Bloomberg reports on a new study released by the Department of Education on science abilities for fourth, eighth, and twelfth graders in the US. Fourth grade scores went up, eighth grade scores held steady, and twelfth grade scores went down.

It would be nice to think that this means four years from now, the eighth grade scoares will be much better. Don't count on it. Many studies have shown that U.S. elementary school students equal their counterparts in other countries, but the farther up you go the farther the US students fall behind. Rather than provide hope for the future, this new study just confirms what we already know.

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The Wrong Response [The Wrong Response]

kevinsch — Wed, 17 May 2006 21:05:43 GMT

Northwestern University has a bit of a scandal going on... someone took photos of a hazing ritual involving the women's soccer team, and the photos are posted on the Internet. You can imagine that the school would imediately crack down on hazing and other outrageous student conduct.

Well, not quite. Instead, they are re-evaluating their policy on posting pictures to Facebook, MySpace, and other community sites.

Huh? So it's more important to crack down on documentation of hazing than on the hazing itself? I would think that the school should do just the opposite: they should increase the severity of punishment for hazing and drinking, and ENCOURAGE the posting of violations to the Internet. They should tell everyone that they should assume somoene is taking pictures, those pictures will get posted, and if you're publicly outed, you're going to be in deep trouble. They might even give every student a digital camera...

Now THAT would have a chilling effect on drinking and hazing.

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Textbooks [Textbooks]

kevinsch — Wed, 17 May 2006 19:56:46 GMT

MSNBC has a really interesting article today about textbooks, the process through which they are written, published and selected in the United States, and the forces that control their content. It's an amazingly political process wher the real control is in the hands of a very small number of people on the Texas and California school boards. This has actually been true for decades. Texas and California are the largest markets for students, so textbook publishers make sure that their textbooks meet those standards and all the other states are forced to choose from the available textbooks without any real choice.

Technology can't solve this problem directly, in that the gating factor isn't the cost or distribution of the books; the problem is the direct control over approving content in the hands of a very few. But what it can do is give teachers and students a wealth of supplementary information that they can use in addition to the textbook -- or in some cases instead of a textbook.

I would be interested to hear how primary and secondary schools in other countries deal with these issues. I know that in higher education, textbooks have a less central role outside the U.S. than they do here.

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High-stakes Exit Exams, and the Meaning of a High School Diploma [High-stakes Exit Exams, and the Meaning of a High School Diploma]

kevinsch — Mon, 15 May 2006 19:40:02 GMT

Much happening in California last week... a judge in Oakland has blocked the state from denying a high school diploma to seniors who failed to pass the California High School Exit Exam (or CAHSEE).

CAHSEE tests for eighth-grade level math and tenth-grade level English abilities. Students have up to six opportunities to take and pass the test.

The judge threw it out under the "equal protection" clause of the Constitution, supporting the plaintiff's argument that there is ample proof that students failing the exam were not taught the materials on the exam, and/or had math and English teachers who were not certificated to teach those subjects.

A fair argument, and I certainly believe that the school system failed these students. The first priority needs to be fixing these schools. Apparently there's lots of wrangling in Sacramento over that too. But let's come back to the issue at hand -- does giving them a diploma really solve anything?

What is the value of a high-school diploma, if after twelve years of education you can't converse in English at a 10th grade level or do math at an eighth grade level? Does anyone believe it's actually worth anything then? Who are we serving by propagating the lie that these kids are educated? Why are the kids suing to get a diploma -- if I were them, I'd be suing the state for big bucks for failing to provide them an education in the first place. Isn't that more important to their long-term prosperity than if they actually have the diploma?

I suppose in theory you need the diploma today to get some jobs or get into college. Is the intent to buy time, so that you can take more classes and hopefully catch up?

While I'm no big fan of standardized tests, I worry that the outcome of this will be to further lower educational standards, and devalue education in general, in our country.

There are no easy answers to any of these questions. It's a shame that education in our country has devolved into a choice between the lesser of two evils.

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Teaching, At All Levels, Is More than a Full-time Job [Teaching, At All Levels, Is More than a Full-time Job]

kevinsch — Mon, 15 May 2006 15:47:53 GMT

Shari Wilson writes an interesting column on the challenges of being a post-secondary professor -- and compares it with her experiences in industry.

This reminds me very much of Horace's Compromise, the classic book by Ted Sizer about a high school teacher's struggle to deal with all the demands of his time and energy in order to be a decent teacher. Both Sizer and Wilson point out that grading alone is a huge time-sink. Do the math for a high school teacher: five classes, 30 kids per class, and a measly one minute per assignment = two and a half hours of grading, potentially every night. Add in-class time, office hours, and lecture prep time, and we're well over eight hours a day.

For university faculty, add on top of that the things that might get you tenure one day: fundraising, grant-proposal writing, advising grad students, committee meetings, attending conferences, reading the literature for your field... it isn't a job, it's an all-consuming lifestyle.

Is there a better way? Or is this the way it should be?

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Deleting Online Predators [Deleting Online Predators]

kevinsch — Sat, 13 May 2006 20:44:52 GMT

Last week Congressman Michael Fitzpatrick introduced the Deleting Online Predators Act, which among other things would prevent access by anyone under 18 to social-networking sites like MySpace and Facebook from public school and public library computers and networks.

BusinessWeek has some discussion of this.

Obviously the Internet industry is up in arms about this, as a draconian measure without necessarily any clear way to enforce it. And they certainly have some good points. This is a pretty broad brush to use to paint the social networking cottage industry.

At the same time, we should ask: what is the right balance between teaching individual responsibility for safe Net usage, and building a "walled garden" for the kids to play in? And how should responsibility be shared between parents, the kids themselves, the schools, and governments?

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Plagiarism [Plagiarism]

kevinsch — Thu, 04 May 2006 22:07:05 GMT

The Globe and Mail discusses plagiarism (and other forms of academic corruption) in China.

The Internet, search engines, digital libraries and citation services have been a huge boon to scholarly work. But they also have a dark side, in that they make plagiarism exceedingly easy. And policing it by faculty is equally hard.

A cottage industry has sprung out of the desire to help police against plagiarism, with tools that instructors can use to verify the originality of submitted work. Actually, to be very precise these tools could verify that something is not original, but they can never actually verify the true originality of a piece of work.

But of course, this is all a war of escalation. The plagiarists will get more clever, and the policing tools will get more clever in lock-step. Why? Because there's money to be made on both sides.

Should we simply resign ourselves to this fate? Or is there a way out of this war of escalation?

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What's Up with the SAT? [What's Up with the SAT?]

kevinsch — Wed, 03 May 2006 20:24:08 GMT

The College Board, which runs the SAT, has sent a letter to college administrators saying that they are seeing a decline of 4-5 points across the Critical Reading and Math sections as compared to last year's scores.

This is in response to inquiries from puzzled administrators, who have seen an even larger drop. They are further mystified because they have seen a rise in many other statistics correlated with the quality of the applicant pool, and which in the past have correlated with SAT scores (as reported by Inside Higher Ed).

I realize that the SAT is a polarizing topic -- there are those who love it and those who hate it (put me in the latter category). But let's leave that aside.

The College Board is suggesting that the drop can be attributed to fewer students re-taking the test (retakes result in scores up to 30 points higher). Perhaps. The real question here is whether the drop is really that small -- colleges are saying that it's bigger. Clearly the College Board would like to minimize the issue, since it cuts to the heart of the statistical credibility of the SAT test, and to the credibility of the College Board to manage it well. They have made some very significant changes over the past few years, while promising that they are taking steps to ensure longitudinal consistency of scores. And it comes at a particularly bad time, since they recently had to publicly admit making multiple grading errors on recent exams.

Did the College Board screw up? Or is something else going on here? Since the College Board isn't talking, we may never know.

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Coming Soon to a Campus Near You: Wiretapping [Coming Soon to a Campus Near You: Wiretapping]

kevinsch — Mon, 01 May 2006 22:53:46 GMT

Network World is running an article today on a case coming before the D.C. Court of Appeals this week. The American Council on Education is suing the FCC over their ruling requiring all ISPs to allow the government provision to wiretap their connections.

The latest extension of that ruling extends to "facilities based Internet access providers" And since many universities have direct connections to the Internet, they can be considered ISPs.

So apart from the privacy vs. security issues (which one could debate either way), univiersities are equally frightened by the prospect of a very costly forced upgrade of their networks in order to facilitate the wiretapping.

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