How fracking interests are buying 'experts'

I'm down in southern New York visiting relatives. This area is Ground Zero for the debate in New York over the controversial and polluting natural gas drilling procedure known as hydrofracking. Around here, it's clear the fracking industry is waging a very aggressive and high-profile campaign touting its alleged virtues;  most expect New York's business-owned governor to allow towns who want the procedure to have it (such decisions will be made locally but will the dollars for the pollution clean up be strictly local too? I doubt it). The campaign is actually very clever, appealing not only on economic grounds but claiming that 'responsible drilling' will reduce the number of wars we fight (not bloody likely).

The public journalism site Pro Publica has done a significant amount of excellent journalism on the perils of hydrofracking and the dishonesty of the industry.

Another good source, Mother Jones, ran a piece recently exposing the degree to which fracking interest are buying 'experts' from academia to purchase credibility for their efforts.

'Accountability' for teachers (but not anyone else in education)

Here is a great story from a family friend on the pitfalls of so-called ''accountability' in schools... a notion that sounds glorious in the theory world of vacuous political sound bites but is pretty tricky in practice to implement in the real world of public education. Reprinted with permission...

My oft-repeated story of my first year of teaching (a million years ago) is about being called into the principal's office to explain why ALL of my elementary students scored below average on their achievement tests. I thought the principal was joking. You see, that year I had taught a special education class of students with IQs in the range of 50 to 75. My boss thought the kids should still be scoring in the average range. Talk about Lake Wobegon! And folks wonder why some teachers are worried about job evaluations being based on student test scores ...

Taylor Luczak

Mimicking the weekly Chronicle’s piece of several days prior, The Post-Star has a nice article on Taylor Luczak, a recent Glens Falls alumnus and current Mississippi State student. Luczak may be less nationally famous than his old high school basketball teammate but he’s equally classy and perhaps even more accomplished. His resumé is quite impressive by the standard of any college student. But when you consider that he’s done all this while training and traveling around the country and spending a whole lot of time as a Division I basketball player, his academic achievements are absolutely remarkable.

Notes from the ivory tower

The Atlantic has an intriguing essay by "Professor X" on how 'the idea that a university education is for everyone is a destructive myth.'