Last spring a small group of my colleagues and I corresponded about the idea that the number of children with reading problems predicts the need for prison beds. In “Internets, Help Me Find A Citation! Does Any State Include Education Data in Estimating Future Needs for Prison Capacity,” Liz Ditz asked for help with that same popular idea. I sent her some notes from a search that I’d conducted last spring on the topic. Although you can read my notes there, the short of them is that there’s a lot of talk about the idea, but not much data. So, why not get some data and examine the question?
Continue reading ‘Predicting imprisonment from reading data’
Daily Archive for December 12th, 2007
In honor of the 101st anniversary of the Pure Food and Drug Act, I’d like to propose the Pure Teaching Act. According to the Wikipedia article, “The Pure Food and Drug Act of June 30, 1906 is a United States federal law that provided for federal inspection of meat products, and forbade the manufacture, sale, or transportation of adulterated food products or poisonous patent medicines.” Wouldn’t it be worthwhile to inspect teaching practices and forbid the dissemination of bogus ones?
My tongue is only a little in my cheek. I remember when Doug Carnine suggested something similar and got hammered by people who were distressed that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) wouldn’t support use of “natural” remedies.
But, seriously, how about honest labeling? Should publishers be allowed to put virtually any claim in their sales material? What does it mean to say “research-based?” (I’m working on an answer to this, by the way.)
What do you think? Bad idea?
Link to the US FDA page giving the history of the law.
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