wasting bandwidth since 1999
In a recent segment of his Revisionist History podcast, Malcom Gladwell takes on the Lord of the Rankings. Also known as the US News & World Report annual list of the “best” colleges and universities in the United States.1
The ranking was first published in 1983 as a tool to raise their profile (and sell magazines) in the pre-internet era when they were a distant third to Time and Newsweek in the category of weekly news magazines.
“If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.” — Abraham Maslow
When it comes to Washington Post education columnist Jay Mathews, that hammer is the Advanced Placement program.
In his column this week, Jay Mathews considers some suggested revisions to the California Mathematics Framework. The changes, similar to those being proposed in Virginia, will attempt to develop a K12 program that better prepares all students to understand the math they will need as adults.
Mathews, of course, knows a better way to accomplish the same goal: Advanced Placement. Which is no surprise since his solution for pretty much every educational issue involves AP. Or charter schools. Or both.
When I was a kid, some products would prominently display in their ads the “Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval”, awarded by the magazine of the same name. I don’t remember ever reading any fine print explaining how they earned that label, but the implication was that this item was better in some way than the one next to it on the store shelf.1 Continue reading
Yet another tech wrinkle in the cheating economy: artificial intelligence that writes term papers.
According to EdSurge, always a reliable source,1 a “growing number of companies” offer students “an algorithm that writes term papers for them based on chosen keywords”.
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