Kevin Schofield

This is a very interesting editorial piece discussing the classic "Physics for poets" classes and whether we should banish them schools.I thought that the three criteria for a good non-majors science class, as stated by the author were thought provoking:1. Have a very narrow topic.2. The…

This week here in Washington State, students will be subjected to the WASL statewide standardized test. The Seattle Times has several stories related to it, including a feature story on the teaching of math in the state.Last year, only 47.5% of 10th graders in the state of Washington passed the math…

The finals of the ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest was last week, and the results are in.Russia and Poland did very well. China and Canada were very respectable. The U.S. had MIT at #8, and then it's a looooong way down to the next U.S. school. India seems under-represented…

Continuing our riff on issues with mathematics education this week... yesterday the White House announced the formation of a new National Mathematics Advisory Council to advice the President and Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings on a range of issues related to mathematics education. At least…

Today the governor of Michigan signed a bill "establishing a rigorous high school curriculum" in the state. Curiously enough, in the list of required courses for all students (typical stuff: four credits each of math and English, three credits of science, etc.) is "one online learning…

In case you haven't been paying attention, in the last few years the overall college population in the US has trended increasingly female (with the exception of computer science and engineering).A new report from the National Bureau of Economic Research suggests that there is a long-term view of how…

Network World is running an article today on a case coming before the D.C. Court of Appeals this week. The American Council on Education is suing the FCC over their ruling requiring all ISPs to allow the government provision to wiretap their connections. The latest extension of that ruling extends…

The College Board, which runs the SAT, has sent a letter to college administrators saying that they are seeing a decline of 4-5 points across the Critical Reading and Math sections as compared to last year's scores.This is in response to inquiries from puzzled administrators, who have seen an…

The Globe and Mail discusses plagiarism (and other forms of academic corruption) in China.The Internet, search engines, digital libraries and citation services have been a huge boon to scholarly work. But they also have a dark side, in that they make plagiarism exceedingly easy. And policing it by…

The computer science department at Georgia Tech has done a fairly radical re-work of its curriculum to try to change the field's reputation and attract more students to the program. A key part of the new program is to emphasize "threads"  that let people choose a set of courses…