If you were a fan of the HBO series “The Wire,” you likely remember the scene in the fourth season focused on Baltimore public schools where the term “juking the stats” defined how corporate-driven reengineering of the public sphere has distorted public institutions so [...]
Customize Learning: Engage Students, Textbooks Not Required
Philip Kovacs2016-11-29T17:39:21-05:00> This talk was given at a local TEDx event, produced independently of the TED Conferences. The educational reforms of the last 100 years are predicated on information scarcity. Today, not unlike the early 1900s, Children go to schools where [...]
Making Money Shouldn’t Be the Purpose of a College Education
empathy2016-11-29T17:39:21-05:00As a Princeton professor, I really ought to love college rankings. The most famous of them, by U.S. News and World Report, currently places my employer first among national universities, nudging out Harvard and Yale. Forbes’s list of “America’s Top Colleges” has [...]
Don’t Send Your Kid to the Ivy League
empathy2016-11-29T17:39:24-05:00In the spring of 2008, I did a daylong stint on the Yale admissions committee. We—that is, three admissions staff, a member of the college dean’s office, and me, the faculty representative—were going through submissions from eastern Pennsylvania. The applicants had been assigned [...]
This School Is Not a Pipe
empathy2016-11-29T17:39:29-05:00By Adam Bessie and Josh Neufeld, | Truthout | Graphic Journalism. February 7, 2014 1] “Promise Neighborhoods and the Importance of Community: Remarks of U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan at Neval Thomas Elementary School, Washington, DC.” Dec. 21, 2012 [2] “Fuel Your School Program Benefits [...]