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Dayton Daily News education reporter Scott Elliott writes about schools, kids, teaching and learning.
Home > Blogs > Get on the Bus > Archives > 2006 > May > 08
Monday, May 8, 2006
LA Times hops on the ed blog train
It apparently was launched quietly on May 1, but it appears the LA Times has a new education blog called School Me! (A nod to Alexander Russo at This Week in Education, who found it before I did.)
It appears School Me! will feature a weekly column by Bob Sipchen, a Pulitzer Prize winning editorial writer at the LA Times, adding another talented scribe with a distinctive voice to the small but growing stable of mainstream media (MSM) education blogs. In between columns, there are more traditional blog posts, which apparently will be written by Sipchen and a colleague.
By my count, this makes six MSM edublogs, including this one. Bigger papers seem to be suddenly jumping on board, with the Miami Herald’s Matthew Pinzur only recently having begun Gradebook.
Weirdly, as Russo hailed the appearance of a serious new voice in the MSM edusphere, he claims this one appears more promising and different from the rest of the MSM education blogs because Sipchen is “neither relatively green nor a reporter.”
Huh? Alexander appears to me to be mostly wrong on both counts.
First of all, I wonder if Sipchen would agree that he is not a reporter, considering that he was a reporter on the staff of the LA Times for 11 years before becoming an editor in 1998 and later helping to lead the Times’ opinion pages. Oh, he was also a freelance writer for seven years before working at the Times.
So is he really that different from the rest of us MSM edubloggers? Alexander also hints that Sipchen is more experienced, as opposed to other MSM edubloggers, whom he calls “relatively green.” What makes for a “green education reporter?” Well, at a recent education reporting seminar I went to, less than five of the 30 or so reporters in attendance had covered the beat more than three years.
So are the MSM edubloggers really green? Let’s take a quick look:
- The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel’s blog is written by several people, but recently Alan Boursk has been posting most often. Boursk has a mere 34 years as a reporter, including 11 years covering education.
- At the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, edublogger Patti Ghezzi has been covering education since 1997, or nine years. Oh, and she used to be a teacher.
- I honestly don’t know how long Jennifer Fernandez, who’s been writing for The Chalkboard blog at the Greensboro News-Record in North Carolina, has been an education reporter. But I know she’s been edublogging longer than most, since 2004.
- Pinzur’s Gradbook blog at the Miami Herald says he’s been covering education for four years.
- Then there’s me. I’ve been a reporter for 15 years and covered education for nine years.
I don’t know. It seems like on the whole MSM edubloggers are pretty experienced and serious. And while some of the MSM edublogs are still finding their way, I think a couple have pretty distinctive voices and a lot of interesting things to say. They are, by definition, different than solo bloggers, or those who blog on behalf of education organizations. MSM edublogs have a particular, local audience they have to think about, which tilts them some. And generally, they are less opinion driven than most blogs. But I still find them informational and, in many cases, fun.
Permalink | Comments (3) | Categories: Journalism
The NBA and the SAT
Imagine you were given a chance to put together a pro basketball team for a one-time exhibition between two teams made up of some of the best players in the National Basketball Association. You and an opponent could each pick players from among all NBA rosters.
There’s just one hitch for you. The players on your team must be in the top 10 percent of the league for free throw shooting.
Your opponent choose any players based on whatever criteria I choose.He can build a team or shooters, dribblers, rebounders or defensive wizards. Or he can just go with his gut and try to pick players who will be a good mix and make a great team. In other words he gets to select a team the way managers of sports teams, or any other competitive enterprise for that matter, would actually assemble a winning team.
What would happen? Well, it just so happens that in the NBA, some of the very best players — including many of the 2005 all stars — stink at free throw shooting.
So why would anyone building a basketball team be so focused on one measure of performance — in this example, free throw shooting — that they would be willing to exclude great players who might actually help them win?
They wouldn’t, because to do so would be crazy. And that’s the point of this analogy, a clever lesson about why it may not make sense for colleges to limit admission to only those who can reach a minimum score on the SAT.
I stumbled across this example in an education journal called “Radical Pedagogy,” so perhaps it’s no surprise that Georgia State professor Jonathan Gayles’ lesson is a little out there. Gayles wanted to demonstrate for his students the pitfalls of over-relying on one measure of performance when judging overall performance. So he got creative.
He let his class pick an NBA all star team while adhering to an arbitrary minimum requirement on one measure — their players must be among the league’s top 10 percent in free throw shooting. Gayles’ team had no restrictions. With rosters chosen, the two teams played a video game — in which the outcome is supposed to simulate a real result based on statistics.
As you might guess, Gayles’ team won, dominating five of seven statistical categories in the game. The students’ team bested Gayles on rebounds, and their players made every free throw they shot, but they lost.
What does this exercise tell us about the way colleges, especially elite schools, select their students? Some schools pride themselves on evaluating the whole student, with the SAT score just one of many factors they consider. But the vast majority of schools draw an arbitrary line on the grading scale, often requiring applicants SAT scores be among the very highest in the nation at elite schools, and they won’t even look a student with an SAT score that falls short.
This may relegate the academic version of Shaquille O’Neal — a student limited in test performance but amazingly gifted on other measures — to a lower ranked school and, perhaps, a less effective education.
Interestingly, one of the few extreme talents that will cause a college to overlook a low SAT score is, of course, basketball skill.
What do you think of this analogy and professor Gayles’ class activity?
Permalink | Comments (3) | Categories: My Favorite Posts, Testing
