G’town not Catholic enough, libraries beyond books, UTexas regent fight, and bias in classroom evaluations: Required Readings, 5.13.14
To begin our Required Readings for this Tuesday the 13th, the Vatican has responded to Exorcist author William Peter Blatty’s petition asking that Georgetown University be stripped of the Catholic and Jesuit labels because, in his opinion, the school nor the student body are Catholic enough. Specifically, he was concerned that the school had invited former Health and Human Services Secretary and pro-choice individual Kathleen Sebelius to speak.
Academic libraries striving to keep themselves relevant and adaptive while proving their value in an era when every budget dollar must be fought for. Sometimes efforts to that end are controversial. Two stories this week highlight efforts to meet faculty and student needs in new ways. First is an editorial on the trend toward moving library stacks to off-site storage and using on-campus space for study areas and other purposes. An example of those “other purposes” is the napping station housed at the University of Michigan’s undergraduate library and supported by the student government.
The Texas House of Representatives broke new ground on Monday when a committee voted, for the first time in state history, that grounds for impeachment exist for a gubernatorial appointee, in this case University of Texas regent Wallace L. Hall Jr.
A study released today by the Brookings Institution shows that when it comes to principals observing teachers in the classroom, the best marks tended to go to teachers whose incoming students were high performing, while those teachers working with academically struggling students were penalized.
Required Readings are a list of links that you might find interesting! Look for them to appear every Tuesday, Thursday, and Sunday morning.Have some links you’d like to share? Submit them on our contact form!
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Reading through the study about teacher observations, I also wonder about the types of teachers assigned to low and high achieving classes. In our current system, one of the perks of being a “better” teacher is the opportunity to teach honors and AP classes. So the better performing teachers are paired with the best students, and the lowest performing students are stuck with the crap teachers. It really should be the other way around.
That’s a good point, and absolutely correct. I wonder if that was factored in during the statistical analysis.