Art Critic and Writer Michael Kimmelman is a concert level pianist.
News & Articles
Problems & Issues
Valuing Stakeholders in Early Childhood Education
STANFORD SOCIAL INNOVATION REVIEW | A conversation with ADRIANNA FOSS
[…] The Outdoor Classroom Project spring from research showing the profound impact of high-quality outdoor environments on every aspect of a young child’s cognitive, social, and physical development.
Tough Week for The Common Core
NPR | By ANYA KAMENETZ
[…] In an ideal world, policies would be made like this: Practitioners in the field would develop solutions to problems. Disinterested experts would study and test them. Philanthropists would support that research and development phase without picking winners. […]
Many in the ed-policy world agree: The Common Core State Standards skipped a few key steps here.
Food as a human right: how cuts to food stamps are hurting the next generation
STREET ROOTS | By JOANNE ZUHL
Dr. Deborah Frank, Director of Grow Clinic for Children at Boston Medical Center:
“Early childhood is when the baby’s brain is going to increase two and a half times — two-thirds of the adult size — with adequate nourishment. Nutrition is the building block of the brain. […]
“It’s been calculated that a $20 billion cut in SNAP [the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program] (which is about the combined impact of the November cuts with the current legislation) will lead to a $15 billion increase for diabetes alone. […]
“If you’re trying to save society money, that’s not how to do it. What you’re doing is increasing all kinds of impairments, learning ability, hospitalizations, behavior problems, and ending probably with a wash or worse in health care and education cost.
Duke: $60,000 A Year For College Is Actually A Discount
NPR | By LISA CHOW
In 1984, it cost $10,000 a year to go to Duke University. Today, it’s $60,000 a year. “It’s staggering,” says Duke freshman Max Duncan, “especially considering that’s for four years.”
But according to Jim Roberts, executive vice provost at Duke, that’s actually a discount. “We’re investing on average about $90,000 in the education of each student,” he says. […]
But just where exactly is all that money going?
The Questions Education Reformers Aren’t Asking
TRUTHDIG | By MIKE ROSE
… no one in power is asking the more fundamental questions like: What is the purpose of education in a democracy, and are our reforms enhancing—or possibly restricting—that purpose?
Research Studies
Finding Solutions
Back to School
STANFORD SOCIAL INNOVATION REVIEW | by CAMERON CONAWAY
In Ethiopia, a foundation-led initiative uses accelerated learning techniques to give young people a second chance at an education.
Charting a better course
THE ECONOMIST | Education
Twenty years ago Minnesota became the first American state to pass charter-school laws. (Charter schools are publicly funded but independently managed.) The idea was born of frustration with traditional publicly funded schools and the persistent achievement gap between poor minority pupils and those from middle-income homes.
Science Rap B.A.T.T.L.E.S. Bring Hip-Hop Into The Classroom
NPR | By ADAM COLE
“Modern-day rappers — all they talk about is money, and all these unnecessary and irrelevant topics,” says Victoria Richardson, a freshman at Bronx Compass High School. Richardson’s rhymes tackle a much less-popular subject: DNA.
Richardson and her teammates were finalists at the Science Genius B.A.T.T.L.E.S. (Bring Attention to Transforming Teaching, Learning and Engagement in Science) competition, where she faced off against other science rappers from nine different New York public schools.
Shawn Achor: The happy secret to better work
TED Talk
We believe that we should work to be happy, but could that be backwards? In this fast-moving and entertaining talk, psychologist Shawn Achor argues that actually happiness inspires productivity.
The Uses of Difficulty
THE ECONOMIST | By IAN LESLIE
Our brains respond better to difficulty than we imagine. In schools, teachers and pupils alike often assume that if a concept has been easy to learn, then the lesson has been successful. But numerous studies have now found that when classroom material is made harder to absorb, pupils retain more of it over the long term, and understand it on a deeper level.
In Practice
Success Stories
A 20-year lesson
THE ECONOMIST | Education
Charter schools are controversial, for three reasons. They represent an “experiment” or “privatisation”. They largely bypass the unions. And their results are mixed.
Aimee Mullins: The opportunity of adversity
TED Talk
The thesaurus might equate “disabled” with synonyms like “useless” and “mutilated,” but ground-breaking runner Aimee Mullins is out to redefine the word. Defying these associations, she shows how adversity — in her case, being born without shinbones — actually opens the door for human potential.
A record-breaker at the Paralympic Games in 1996, Aimee Mullins has built a career as a model, actor and advocate for women, sports and the next generation of prosthetics.
John E. Karlin, Who Led the Way to All-Digit Dialing
NEW YORK TIMES | By MARGALIT FOX
By all accounts a modest man despite his variegated accomplishments (he had a doctorate in mathematical psychology, was trained in electrical engineering and had been a professional violinist), Mr. Karlin, who died on Jan. 28, at 94, was virtually unknown to the general public.
Women Outpace Men in Earning PhDs
WASHINGTON POST | By DANIEL DE VISE
For the first time, more women than men in the United States received doctoral degrees [in 2009], the culmination of decades of change in the status of women at colleges nationwide, according to a [2010] study undertaken by the Council of Graduate Schools.
The Mighty Mathematician You’ve Never Heard Of
NEW YORK TIMES | By NATALIE ANGIER
Scientists are a famously anonymous lot, but few can match in the depths of her perverse and unmerited obscurity the 20th-century mathematical genius Amalie Noether.
Albert Einstein called her the most “significant” and “creative” female mathematician of all time, and others of her contemporaries were inclined to drop the modification by sex. She invented a theorem that united with magisterial concision two conceptual pillars of physics: symmetry in nature and the universal laws of conservation. Some consider Noether’s theorem, as it is now called, as important as Einstein’s theory of relativity
