Here’s something about Bellwether that doesn’t seem well understood (probably because we have communicated it poorly).
We don’t take fixed positions organizationally on various issues, but that doesn’t mean our team doesn’t have strong views and that those views don’t always align among various team members. We like that, call it ideological diversity or heterodoxy or whatever you want, because it seems to us there are pretty big gaps between what this sector knows and what it thinks it knows and the questions we encounter in our work are complicated and usually carry real tradeoffs.
But, part of that approach means we are empiricists, too, and this analysis by Kate Pennington and Justin Trinidad highlights that. It’s based on some data and shows that teacher shortages are probably not what you read in the newspaper, and certainly not what you heard on Twitter. The data are more nuanced about where shortages are and what kind of shortages we have. The problems are at once more complicated but also more fixable.
You can go a long way in this sector braying about teacher shortages (and I get it, it’s a good advocacy strategy for driving more money to edu), but the actual problems are more interesting – and more solvable.
Also from Bellwether, Tresha Ward on protecting your time as a school leader.
Is a nudge debate like a vigorous debate just so much more gentle? We’re about to find out because we’ve got an actual nudge debate breaking out. Ben Castleman* and Lindsay Page have some new research out indicating that “nudges” might have unintended effects. Jay Greene says, “told you so.” (*Ben and I teach a course together at UVA but very little of it turns on this work so I’m mostly unbiased).
The machine in the picture there on the upper right, which I met at a hotel recently, has me rethinking my entire take on automation. But, regardless of your views on automation this new analysis from Brookings is worth checking out. Some interesting data about who is at risk – might not be what you think – as well as where.
The other day we talked about Janus spin and Janus reality and some of the lawsuits that are coming. Here’s a good example of the king of phase 2 things to watch for.
Well, we haven’t heard from Kentucky Governor Bevin on education in a little while.
Michael Horn on unintended consequences in higher education.