Eight years ago, on the second anniversary of my blog, I asked, “Am I a hedgehog or a fox?” Hilarious, that I could ever be so deluded. I understand why my brain thinks itself a hedgehog, but it will just have to cope with reality.
I am a fox. Even at my lowly level of the word, this is a list only a fox could produce.
Ten Most Read Articles:
- More than Gotcha: Kamala’s Busing Blunder— June 28, 2019
The only item past its sell date. Most of my work maintains its relevance. But this article, outdated though it is, has a good number of my strengths on display. First, unlike the entire media class, I know how to search for and use relevant history. No one listening should have thought anything other than “that’s bullshit” when she claimed to have been on the frontlines of segregation in Berkeley, CA. But no journalist bothered to do the research. Next, I understood as no one else seemed to that she was essentially coming out in favor of busing. At a time when most of the media (and all of Twitter) was wowed, I pointed out she’d almost certainly have to walk that comment back. The other strength: sometimes I really hate people while many other folks are like, man, why is Ed hating on her and then later they go oh, I get it.
ignore me, lazy way to space - Asian Immigrants and What No One Mentions Aloud–October 8, 2013
I’ve kind of cornered the market in Asian immigrant criticism–not of the people, but of the culture, which I think is very damaging to American education. I wouldn’t make such a big deal out of it if everyone else weren’t determined not to notice. This was the first time I wrote about it.
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- Functions vs. Equations: f(x) is y and more — May 24, 2015
A math curriculum piece in third place? Blew me away. But as I mentioned, curriculum searches are specific and get through Google’s recency bias, so they’re the one article category that still gets fed via search engines. I keep meaning to revisit this article because it had a very bimodal reaction. Mathy readers who didn’t teach were aggravated and confused by the article and told me I didn’t understand the math. On the other hand, a number of professors on Twitter understood my point instantly and were very appreciative (and some later commented as well). I think the mathy folks thought I was confusing a system with a function, whereas the professors understood I was using an example of multiple equations that wasn’t a system to show students a difference they hadn’t seen before.
ignore me, lazy way to space - Homework and grades–February 6, 2012
I have relatively few strong views about what teachers should do. Homework is the exception. Homework is insane. Grades are fraud.
ignore me, lazy way to space - Algebra and the Pointlessness of The Whole Damn Thing— August 19, 2012
My first really huge piece, and one I’m still quite fond of. It’s getting harder to find data easily; more states are hiding racial and economic distinctions. But if you look at current data, you’ll see the same pattern: poor whites do about as well as non-poor blacks and Hispanics. Been like that for decades.
ignore me, lazy way to space - Philip Dick, Preschool and Schrödinger’s Cat — April 5, 2013
Canonical Ed on IQ.
ignore me, lazy way to space - Binomial Multiplication and Factoring Trinomials with The Rectangle— September 14, 2012
Another curriculum piece. I took a long time to make sure the figures and explanations were thorough. I hope other teachers get good use from it. Still the best way to teach factoring, even if your kids don’t use it.
ignore me, lazy way to space - The myth of “they weren’t ever taught….”— July 1, 2012
This is one of my favorite pieces. It’s all true, still. Every word. And new teachers have to come to grips with it every year.
ignore me, lazy way to space - The SAT is Corrupt. No One Wants to Know.–December 31, 2014
I am adamantly opposed to grades-based college admissions. But the College Board is corrupt. The international SAT is corrupt. And they’ve changed it in ways to make it far less useful, all in the hopes of ending the score gap, which was never going to happen.
ignore me, lazy way to space - The Gap in the GRE–January 28, 2012
Another of my favorite pieces that asks a very good question: why are genuine high achievers in verbal tests so less frequent than in math tests? Note that in the intervening years, the College Board and the ETS have eliminated all the verbal difficulty in the SAT and the GRE.
So there’s my ten most popular.
Then I just looked over all my articles and looked for favorites that also captured my zeitgeist (can people have zeitgeist?). I was particularly looking for self-contained articles–a lot of time I go down one rabbit hole and then get to the main point. (Yes, I’m thinking of those for my rewrite plans.) I also wanted a good sample.
- Teacher Quality Pseudofacts, Part II–January 15, 2012
This is a top 20 all-time post and was a steady performer for years. I almost didn’t include it; today it seems kind of old hat. But in fairness, that’s like saying 1933’s 42nd Street is cliché because it uses all the old tropes about movie musicals. It didn’t use them. It invented them. When I wrote this article, it was common wisdom that teachers were low-skilled, low-quality, and not very bright. Only the terminally uninformed, the amateurs and the hacks, have made that claim in four or five years. I like to think Pseudofacts has had something to do with that change, because of the very easily found data I brought to light.
ignore me, lazy way to space - The false god of elementary school test scores–July 30, 2012
Another one I almost didn’t include because it definitely has the rabbit hole problem about Rocket Ship at the beginning. However, like Pseudofacts, it’s an early example of my actually looking at readily available information and pointing out the obvious. Plus, great title.
ignore me, lazy way to space - The Fallacy at the Heart of All Reform–September 7, 2012
I wrote a history of modern education reform throughout much of 2020-21. This was a history of earlier policy. But the definition of fallacy I include here holds for the entire era.
ignore me, lazy way to space - The Day of Three Miracles— April 28, 2015
I don’t often talk about colleagues, mainly because for years my relationship with them was….fraught. Not bad, just…there. But this is not only a colleague story, it captures a conundrum that few people in education policy seem to understand. Access or rigor. Not both.
ignore me, lazy way to space - Citizens, Not Americans— June 16, 2016
I love this piece. By the way, Dwayne is married, has a kid, and is in the military. Abdul went to a top tier school and majored in pharmacy, and when he told me I want “Gack!” and he said “yeah, I know. Stupid move.” and now he’s getting an MA in nurse practitioner, or whatever it’s called. Haven’t heard from Chuy. Wing and Benny still teach. One of them is now department chair, and I had a lot to do with it.
ignore me, lazy way to space - “Get Out” a scathing satire? Get Out.–January 22, 2018
I love movies, and I know as much about American diversity as anyone in the country, and I think this is a terrific review that isn’t at all what you’ll expect.
ignore me, lazy way to space - Algebra 2, the Gateway Course–January 28, 2018
Another story about colleagues, students, and really stupid education policy.
ignore me, lazy way to space - Making Rob Long Uncomfortable–December 24, 2018
Silly title, but you can listen to the podcast and see what I mean. It’s well-written, and captures a certain mindset among the centrist conservative punditocracy. As I wrote: “You could practically hear Rob’s toenails shrieking against the tiles as he braked to a stop. This was not the conversation he’d signed up for. He was there to lightly mock feminists and social justice nuts, not crack witty, on-the-nose jokes with Heather about the racial skills deficit.”
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- The Students of My Christmas Present— December 25, 2018
I don’t often get sentimental. And I’ve put up Christmas trees most years since.
ignore me, lazy way to space - Idiosyncratic Explanations for Teacher Shortages–May 31, 2019
Here I raise an issue that seems quite obvious, but isn’t. We have thousands, if not millions, of unemployed PhDs who will never get a tenured job and work as poorly paid adjuncts. Why don’t they become teachers? After all, everyone says we need smarter teachers, right? There’s a cognitive dissonance revealed in the fact that everyone understands that a poorly paid PhD is acting rationally in refusing to take a better-paid, more secure job with great benefits.
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I thought I was done, but 2017 spoke up, really pissed off. Why nothing? I tried reassurance. It was nothing personal. I wrote some good shit that year. Besides, 2020 and 2021 aren’t represented either. But it would not be assuaged and as my mother isn’t doing well, and this is a not only an ode to American schools but also a lovely story about my mom, an extra…
ignore me, lazy way to space - What the Public Means by “Public Education”–March 19, 2017
When education reformers wonder why everything went wrong, they should think about the thoughts expressed here.
Thanks for reading.
educationrealist 