The governor of New York recently proposed that 50% of teachers evaluations be based on the results of standardized tests. I’m not going to go into great detail about how much of fundamental misunderstanding of the purpose of standardized tests that is. The short version is that standardized tests give the most useful information when it’s not too specific, so for example looking at a district by district sample, or by selecting randomized classrooms from the entire state/province to give an overall picture. Other people have explained what a problem it is to hold teachers responsible for things they don’t have full control over. I’m not going to go into that today. Instead I’m going to focus on the labour market.
Author: Noah Arney
-
I Am Not a Wallet
I had this thought last night when trying out Sims Free Play on my phone. Everything takes forever to complete. While most of these pay to speed up games take about one to two minutes to do a task early in the game, just long enough to figure out what else you can do, Sims takes 10-120 minutes. So you set one task, close the game and come back to it later. It’s rather boring. But the game is fun when you’re playing it. Which is all designed to get you to pay for premium currency to make the game play faster. (more…)
-
The Problem with “College Costs” Articles
Everyone associated with the Higher Education field, and a lot of people who aren’t, seem to like to talk about the cost of Higher Education. From Kevin Carey’s book “The End of College” to New York Times opinion pieces and their responses, and more responses this is a hot topic. For a Canadian perspective I find a lot of interesting thoughts on the topic with this blog too.
Having read too many articles which explicitly ignore points which contradict their narative I’m going to propose two New Rules:
-
Indigenous Access to Post-Secondary
Aboriginal people make up 6% of BC and the percentage is rising quickly.
From an economic standpoint there’s a huge wage gap between aboriginal and non aboriginal workers pay based on looking at full time workers with the same career classification. But the good news is that the more education an aboriginal person has the closer that gap is. In fact the gap almost disappears for aboriginal people with a masters degree or higher. But Aboriginal people are less likely to go to post secondary, with only 45% of working age aboriginal people having a post secondary certificate diploma or degree compared to 62% for non aboriginal residents.
-
How is this a threat?
Last week NASPA’s blog had a post called “Five Megatrends Threatening Student Affairs (and How to Turn Them Into Opportunities)” written by Laurence N. Smith and Albert B. Blixt. It was an interesting read, but I have to take issue with one of their points.
Trend #3: Changing student demographics
Overall competition for students will increase over the next decade as the number of high school graduates declines while the racial/ethnic/socio-economic makeup of entering students will shift. By 2020, 45 percent of the nation’s public high school graduates will be non-white compared with 38 percent in 2009. Students will be more likely to be the first in family to attend college and will have fewer economic means. In addition, more of those entering college will be foreign-born including immigrants and international students recruited actively by colleges and universities. Adult learners, often with jobs and families, are becoming a greater percentage of the student body. Finally, we are seeing the end of the millennial generation and a new “touchscreen” generation coming to campus. All of these emerging segments have different needs and expectations that have direct implications for what services student affairs needs to provide.
Here’s my issue: how is this a threat to Student Affairs? Now, I understand that they’re trying to make a rhetorical point to springboard into their ways to take advantage of opportunities but hear me out with my issue.
-
#MySAPath – My Path to Student Affairs via Indigenous Education
The full post of this is over at The Student Affairs Collective blog.
I am a student advisor (both academic and career advising) at a small aboriginal college in Vancouver B.C., Native Education College. The issue I have with describing a non-traditional student affairs path is that I have very little reference for what a traditional path is; there are so many routes to the field, at least among my colleagues here in Canada. Mine may have been a little unusual, though.
My plan when I went to University was to be a high school English teacher. There were many reasons my plan changed but most of them come down to being unaware of my options. I went to university thinking I had one option, came to realize that I had three, and wound up taking the first option anyway only to change my direction two years later.
Please go here for the rest of the article.
-
Fantasy, Humanism, and Improving Authors
Everyone likes different books. I tend to like books that speak to being human. I think that’s why I read so much fantasy literature. To blatantly steal a concept, they use the impossible to examine the probable. When you strip away the requirement to make the setting accurate you allow yourself the ability to more easily examine Truth.
-
Secret witnesses in Canadian courts?
If you haven’t seen it yet bill C-44 (the Protection of Canada from Terrorists Act) is an interesting read (see more here: http://openparliament.ca/bills/41-2/C-44/). It does a number of things, mostly putting in law things that are already happening. One portion of it is highly problematic, though others might take issue with different provisions, and that would be subsection 18 – the secret witness section. Here’s the complete text of that section before we get into the problematic part: