Research in the News? Comments? Observations?

It’s official!

A survey by Entertainment Weekly magazine named Homer Simpson the greatest character created for film or television during the past 20 years, beating out Harry Potter.

To the Oxford English Dictionary, Homer Simpson is the immortal utterer of the word, “d’oh!” To the people of Britain, Homer Simpson is the “greatest American” – the fictional character they would most like to see become president of the United States.

No information about the survey. Still, this cartoon has been around for forever it seems–so it must still have great appeal to both adults and children.

Research in the News

Here is an interesting analysis and chart prepared by the Too Much ,  Institute for Policy Studies.   What do you think?

Maybe it is cooking (see Oliver post below)—but maybe it is smaller classes that make a difference in academic achievement in our schools. Opinions abound, of course, so what can we learn from the research?

 I came across a study by Krueger and Whitmore (2001) that looked at the results of the Tennessee’s Project STAR.[1] This was, at least at that time, the only large-scale randomized experiment ever to measure the effects of class size. In this experiment, 11,600 elementary students and their teachers were randomly assigned to small classes (13-17 students), regular-size classes (22-25 students), or regular-size classes with a teachers-aide.  The experiment began in 1985 when students entered kindergarten and lasted through the 3^rd grade. After 3^rd grade, they returned to regular-size classes.  The researchers looked to see if there are discernable impacts in the 8^th grade testing as well as scores on ACT or SATs taken in high school.

 Their bottom-line conclusion was that small classes did increase test scores, that it increased test scores more for black children than for white children, and those effects were still evident in later grades, although not nearly as great as they were in the earlier grades.  Given their results, the writers conclude: “If all students were assigned to a small class, the black-white gap in taking a college entrance exam would fall by an estimated 60 percent.” (see http://www.irs.princeton.edu/pubs/pdfs/451.pdf)   Continue reading »

Pretending that something doesn’t exist if it’s hard to measure leads to faulty models. You’ve already seen the system trap that comes from setting goals around what is easily measured, rather than around what is important….Don’t be stopped by the ‘if you can’t define and measure it, I don’t have to pay attention to it’ ploy. No one can define or measure justice, democracy, security, freedom, truth, or love.  No one can define or measure any value. But if no one speaks up for them, if systems aren’t designed to produce them, if we don’t speak about them and point toward their presence or absence, they will cease to exist.”

Donella H. Meadows, Thinking in Systems: A Primer, 2008. pp. 176-177