Archive for the Education Category


This might be the best 11 minutes you’ll spend today.

Published April 16th, 2012

Seth flags this short film about this amazing project. Watch it. Seriously. P.S. Seth also has some interesting thoughts on what this film tells us about the book industry.

How to predict a student’s SAT score: Look at the parents’ tax return

Published February 21st, 2012

This weekend, triggered by a few readers who disagreed with my assertion that socioeconomic status is a huge driver of educational attainment and performance, I decided to respond the way any nerd would in my situation: I made a chart. In a moment of Excel fervor, I took data from the College Board’s 2011 Total [...]

Eight brief points about “merit pay” for teachers

Published February 16th, 2012

In today’s Washington Post is another story about “merit pay” for teachers. But this one, by national education correspondent Lyndsey Layton, spends some space on my own thoughts on the topic. For those new to the issue, or coming to the Pink Blog from Tweets about the article, let me summarize my views as succinctly as [...]

Warning: 1 in 5 teenagers will experiment with art

Published December 12th, 2011

The College for Creative Studies, the excellent art and design school in Detroit, has launched one of the smartest ad campaigns I’ve seen this year. The objective: Get students (and parents) to consider a BFA or MFA. The technique: The posters you see below.

The future of education . . . 100 years ago

Published August 2nd, 2011

The intrepid Maria Popova — BTW, if you’re not subscribing to her newsletter or following her on Twitter, you should — points to a really interesting item in How to Be a Retronaut. The Retronaut blog, which collects artifacts from the past to help us understand the present, unearthed an article from Ladies Home Journal [...]

Why do we care about some things and not others?

Published July 6th, 2011

Joe F. is a high school teacher in New York who emailed recently with a pair of interesting questions. In fact, they were so intriguing that I asked Joe if I could present them to Pink Blog readers for their responses. Here is Joe’s explanation, followed by his questions: Our school holds an annual holiday [...]

What your business can learn from a 6th grade classroom

Published May 4th, 2011

Josh Stumpenhorst, a teacher in the suburbs of Chicago, wrote to share his experience trying implement a FedEx Day, one of the stickiest ideas in the Motivation 3.0 repertoire, in his 6th grade classroom. He dubbed it Innovation Day 2011 and has a great description at his blog, Stump the Teacher. But I wanted to highlight some [...]

Does giving teachers bonuses improve student performance?

Published March 16th, 2011

One of the hottest ideas in education policy these days is tying teacher pay to student performance on standardized tests. The theory is that offering up cash bonuses will prompt unmotivated and unaccountable teachers to get their acts together and do better by our kids. The first comprehensive study of this approach, from the Nashville public [...]

Interview exchange of the day

Published December 22nd, 2010

From Deborah Solomon’s New York Times Magazine interview with superstar physicist Brian Greene . . . SOLOMON: Do you think SAT scores define intelligence? GREENE: No. They define the capacity to answer questions on an SAT test.

What a high school algebra teacher can teach us about innovation

Published September 22nd, 2010

Chances are that you’ve seen the handiwork of Karl Fisch. Along with Scott McLeod, he created the legendary Shift Happens videos, which have now been viewed online roughly four gazillion times. But Fisch also has a day job — at Arapahoe High School, near Denver. This year, in addition to his other duties, he’s begun [...]

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