Good Poll-Reading Advice from FiveThirtyEight.com
Here.
There’s nothing quite so annoying as hearing people spin the polls.
While I know that some forms of determining merit pay for teachers can be unfair, in general I think tying pay to performance is an excellent, indeed necessary idea. Now the Florida Education Association is trying to block $700 million in grants from the federal government because it’s tied to incentive pay. Bad idea, I’d…
Over and over I’ve heard the refrain, “The invention of the _________ is causing the deterioration of society because it _______.” The technology may be rapid transport, from the steam driven train to the airplane, or communications from radio to television to the internet, or any other form of technology. The internet is a favorite…
I think it’s as simple as that. I’m against it. Energion author Bob Cornwall writes about it, and I agree. I saw one question that disturbed me, not in that I don’t know how to respond, but in what else it may suggest. The question is whether I’d support torture if an individual knew where…
Way back in the pre-blog days for me (April, 2005), I wrote an essay for my Energion.com web site titled Make Education a Priority. You can type that rather uncreative title into a search engine and you’ll find that many dozens of politicians are using it as a slogan, but I don’t see that priority…
Yes, indeed, but also for correction. After writing my previous entry, I found this column by Howard Fineman on MSNBC. Rather than hide it as an update to that post, I wanted to highlight it. Fineman concludes: As for Obama, he was benefiting from events. But he should be sobered as well. What the Viral…
Last night my wife and I were watching television, and getting inundated with political ads. Now we don’t generally use these ads to determine who we’ll vote for. I try to research as much as possible about the candidates, and so does she, and then we share our conclusions. It’s a good exercise in learning…