Education:

The Weird Economics of Higher Education, March 13, 2008
MTSU economics professor and blogger Martin Kennedy kicked off a small discussion at VolunteerVoters.com with his comment about higher education tuition cost increases. I've posted two long comments looking at the weird economics of higher ed tuition. I'm reposting them...

Your Children Are Not Your Children, March 7, 2008
In California not long ago a judge ruled that California parents do not have a constitutional right to home-school their children. It can't happen here, right? Well, Tennessee's governor and a group of Democrat lawmakers in the state House believe...

Give Guns A Chance, February 28, 2008
Student journalists at Vanderbilt University endorse allowing students to carry guns on campus. "We cannot let the fear of guns themselves prevent us from protecting ourselves," the writer says. Well-written and smartly argued....

Stupidity Kills, February 16, 2008
Associated Press: Colleges feel helpless to prevent shootings. And yet they aren't willing to let faculty, staff and students who have gun carry permits to go armed in self-defense. As long as the criminal element knows that campuses are, essentially,...

Pushing Lies, February 3, 2008
The Tennessean previews the appearance later this week at Vanderbilt University of Guatemalan activist and author Rigoberta Menchu, who won a Nobel Prize for her book I, Rigoberta Menchu, and her work on behalf of the indigenous peoples of her...

Winner, January 14, 2008
Excellent news from Entrepreneurial Mind blogger Jeff Cornwall....

Better Writing Through Blogging, June 7, 2007
At Pittsburgh's Bethel Park High School, English literature papers "are jumping off the wood pulp and launching into the blogosphere," reports the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Three teachers at the school "are using blogs to help students write - a sort of...

Indoctrinate U Review, June 2, 2007
Linda Seeback at the Rocky Mountain News reviews the documenatary Indoctrinate U. If you'd like to see the film screened in Nashville, visit the film's website....

Indoctrinate U, June 1, 2007
You should watch the excellent trailer for Indoctrinate U, the new documentary about the epidemic of suppression of non-liberal viewpoints on college campuses, here and sign up to request a screening in your town. I'd love to see a Nashville...

Colleges Try Cell Phones, YouTube To Get Word Out, March 20, 2007
But are the students paying attention? At Belmont University a few years ago, many students rarely checked their campus email account. Now, it appears they don't want university text messages on their cell phones. We never really solved the problem...

UT Promises to Go Green, February 20, 2007
The University of Tennessee is the first and so far the only Tennessee college or university to sign the American College & University Presidents Climate Commitment, which the Chronicle of Higher Education described as "a new effort by academia to...

Kay Brooks Update, May 19, 2006
NashvilleIsTalking.com has a pretty good round-up on the Kay Brooks story, including links to various blogs and the news articles in The Tennessean and the Nashville City Paper. It's not central to the debate, but I've noticed something a bit...

Kay Brooks Update, May 18, 2006
The Tennessean covers the "controversy" over the selection of home-schooling mom Kay Brooks to fill a seat on the Nashville school board left vacant by a resignation. The controversy is this: the public school education establishment wanted someone from within...

Blogging Home-Schooler Mom Elected to Nashville School Board, May 17, 2006
Congratulations to Kay Brooks are in order. And the Metro public school system will be better for her being on the school board. One commenter on the Nashville City Paper website wrote, "People who send their kids to private schools...

Memphis Catholic Schools receive $30 mil donation, January 8, 2006
By Ben Cunningham The Memphis Catholic Diocese received a $30 million donation which will allow them to serve more inner city kids with their Jubilee Schools program. Here is a quote directly from the text of the news article: "In...

Knowledge is Power, January 2, 2006
The Nashville Scene has named the students, teachers and administrators of Nashville's KIPP Academy its Nashvillians of the Year for the just-completed 2005, and deservedly so. Often, public school administrators will defend the teachers and administrators of poorly performing urban...

We made the Times, November 26, 2005
By Kay Brooks ...and confirmed our stereotype before the country-western singers had hardly paid their New York hotel bills after the CMA's.Students Ace State Tests, but Earn D's From U.S. By SAM DILLON New York Times After Tennessee tested its...

Questioning an obsolete system, November 25, 2005
By Kay Brooks David Kirkpatrick asks a hard question in his current essay titled "Is the Traditional High School Obsolete?" and then asks another good question:As educators who claim to teach critical thinking and problem solving, why can't we think...

Education and business, November 24, 2005
By Kay Brooks Good for Williamson County. They managed to persuade Nissan executives that their schools were an asset. I wish Davidson County, and every other county in the state, had as much to work with. Something that state legislators...

Unfunded NCLB upheld, November 24, 2005
By Kay Brooks Yesterday a US District Court Judge upheld NCLB despite its being a unfundad mandate. From the NY Times:In his ruling, Judge Bernard A. Friedman of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, Southern...

Patterns, November 23, 2005
By Kay Brooks One of the first lessons my children got in mathematics was to look for patterns. I explained to them that finding those patterns will help them find the correct answers. This week I realized I'm seeing some...