Earlier this year I flew to Rochester, Minnesota, where I learned how fast heat will depart from the human body if you're dumb enough to travel north of the 44th parallel in winter without proper insulation. (Answer: very.) I also visited the new branch campus of the University of Minnesota and wrote an article about it, which you can read here.

They're doing a lot of interesting things at UMR. (See also David Glenn's excellent profile in The Chronicle last year.) There are no academic departments and every undergraduate (the first class matriculated a year ago) is pursuing a B.S. in health sciences. Professors from the humanities and the sciences coordinate their curricula on a week-by-week basis, so a student might synthesize a compound like creatine in chemistry, design an experiment examining its effect on muscle fatigue in biology, debate the ethics of performance-enhancing drugs...

Yesterday the NY Daily News reported an interesting and annoying item. Eight members of Congress from New York State and one high-ranking member of the Obama Administration are collecting sweet little pension paychecks from the State of New York every year. Before heading to DC, you see, they worked in New York state government, and they’re older than 55, and they now work outside the state’s pension system. Here’s a rundown of the payments, with party affiliation:

• Paul Tonko (D)--$64K
• Pete King (R)--$40K
• Maurice Hinchey (D)--$36K
• Jerrold Nadler (D)--$20K
• Eliot Engel (D)--$15K
• Jose Serrano (D)--$14K
• Nita Lowey (D)--$10K
• Louise Slaughter (D)--$9K
• John McHugh, Secretary of the Army -- $30K

Those dollars sit on top of the $174,000 base pay that Members of Congress pull in. It’s called double-dipping—retiring from one public position, taking pension payouts, and working in a...

In my previous post, I observed that whenever I blog on art, there’s nary a peep. When I blog on politics, on the other hand, there’s a cacophony of voices. Although facts are often tossed around in discussions of art and politics, both subjects are matters of opinion. How is it we’re so insecure about offering our opinions about art in public, while so bold in expressing our opinions about politics?

In my first post, I suggested that a lot of people hold back offering opinions about art because they think they don’t know enough about it to talk about it intelligently. Understandably, then, even if they use a pseudonym, they’re reluctant to go on record talking about art in a public forum like Brainstorm. Educated people, in particular, don’t want to appear unsophisticated, and when talking about art, it’s easy to end up sounding either like a Philistine or a nincompoop. A few readers...

Hello class. Hello former students who are willing to go another round in this ring, and welcome to the new folks—the ones who have no idea what this course will be like.

Let me tell you who’ve never taken a class with me before a little about what to expect. And please understand that while I’m delighted that you're here, I will also understand if you decide that you can’t work within the boundaries I’ve set up.

The points I’m talking about today are non-negotiable. That’s why I mention them up front. On a number of other issues, I can be flexible. Concerning the following, however, you will find me intractable:

1. No electronic devices. No laptops, no cell phone, no Blackberries, no pacemakers, nothing. If you have an electronic bracelet around your ankle monitored by your parole officer, you can leave that on. Everything else is switched off before you enter this classroom. You don’...

Over the years, I’ve spent some time reviewing items on reading-comprehension tests, evaluating the passages selected as texts and checking the following eight or ten questions for accuracy, validity, etc. It can be a draining activity, scanning rather dry and often remote informational text, then spotting ambiguities or confusions in the questions that must be corrected.

One thing, I’ve found, lightens the load: a little knowledge about the passage material. Just a little bit helps a lot. Indeed, the difference between no knowledge and a little knowledge means much more than the difference between a little knowledge and abundant knowledge.

That’s my experience, and it corresponds with long-time arguments made by E. D. Hirsch and others about the importance of “domain knowledge” to reading comprehension. A recent essay in The American Prospect (magazine motto: “Liberal Intelligence”) a...

I’ve noticed during the nearly three years I’ve been blogging for Brainstorm that whenever I blog on art, the reaction is deafening silence. When I blog on politics, on the other hand, people are at the ready with their opinions. Here’s the first of two posts on the why these two very different subjects, both of which are arenas in which people readily form opinions, cause such different reactions when it comes to taking a public stand.

Unlike words, or mathematical formulae, or scientific studies, most art automatically prompts one of three reactions: I like it, I don’t like it, or I’m indifferent to it. While people concede to art historians—and even artists—special knowledge about the who, what, when, where and how of art, they don’t accord them special privileges in the opinion area.  Most people firmly believe that art is a subjective matter, and that all opinions about it are...

Ben Miller and Phuong Ly's expose of college dropout factories reminds me of many conversations I've had over the years with policy makers and foundation officials about helping more students earn college degrees. They tend to go like this: First, we need a "research strategy" to identify "best practices" that have a statistically significant impact on college graduation. Then we need a "dissemination strategy" to communicate those practices to administrators and practitioners. Colleges will adopt the best practices, and graduation rates will rise.

I think this is mostly wrong.

The article tells the story of Nestor Curiel, a former student at Chicago State University. Here's what happened:

With its tree-lined campus and gleaming new steel and glass convocation center, Chicago State certainly looked impressive. But within his first month there, Nestor wanted to leave. Advisers in the...

It's been a busy one. Here's a (small, incomplete) peek inside the life of a tenure-track mama prof.

(1) Traveled on work trips to Seattle, San Diego, Boulder, Laguna Beach, Washington (twice), and Chicago—and most of that was just June.

(2) Spent two weeks at Northwestern University, 10-plus hours per day, learning the technical in's and out's of cluster randomized trials at a veritable "geek camp." Had a blast. Imported generous family members to babysit during the day and parented my 7-month-old daughter every evening, awaking three to five times every night to nurse.

(3) Wrote and submitted three paper proposals to the American Educational Research Association.

(4) Completed final edits on two articles forthcoming this fall.

(5) Watched as my 3-year-old son wore a suit and went down the aisle as ring-bearer in his nanny's wedding. Cried my eyes out.

(6) Wrote a proposal for nearly $700,000...

When the president named Arne Duncan as his first secretary of education, he was doing a lot more, and a lot worse, than just naming a Chicago crony and basketball buddy to a critical Cabinet position. He was adopting one of the most aggressive, least tested, top-down, pro-corporate philosophies toward education administration ever promoted in this country.

Despite clear evidence that Duncan's methods had failed to improve Chicago Public Schools by the only measure he overwhelmingly targeted (test scores), reporters from the corporate media tripped all over themselves to lavish friendly coverage on Duncan's efforts to bring the same tactics to bear on a national scale. Taking advantage of state revenue shortages, Duncan took command of a massive fiscal war chest and turned it into a reality legislation show called Race to the Top.

"Want a piece of my billions?" Duncan asked the states,...

Editorial prose is rarely poetic or poignant, but today in the NY Times appears a pleasing exception that touches the world of Chronicle readers. The item ruminates briefly upon a rite of passage for parents and children, the trips to college campuses to drop off 19-year-olds for freshman year. Here are the final two paragraphs which risk a bit of sententiousness, but to me they come off well:

"For the next couple of weeks, a lot of Americans will be thinking about time, saying things like, 'I can’t believe you’re going off to college.' The time-thinkers will be the parents and relatives, not the kids, who can believe it and have in fact been ready for it for a good while.

"It will come as a surprise to them when they realize the separateness of their old life. Suddenly, they’ll see that one of the things they know—really know—is how childhood felt, how it felt to be anchored in that...