Live from the Nuke Free Zone

The President recently spoke to the nation’s students on math and science. There are some valuable lessons I think we can learn from the experience.
Lesson the first: framing.
DALLAS, Feb. 3 — President Bush told the nation’s students on Friday that if they studied math and science they would not be joining the “nerd patrol” […]

The average American college graduate’s literacy in English declined significantly over the past decade, according to results of a nationwide test released yesterday.
When the test was last administered, in 1992, 40 percent of the nation’s college graduates scored at the proficient level, meaning that they were able to read lengthy, complex English texts and draw […]

Via the Houston Chronicle comes a story that seems to have been little remarked upon outside of Texas: a young girl by the name of Katie Wernecke has had radiation therapy for her leukemia repeatedly delayed due to the idiotic pseudoscientific paranoia of her parents. By latest report, she had an 80-90 percent chance […]

In a lighter counterpoint to my last rambling on the state of Texas education, my very own school district wins a share of the Broad Prize for Urban Education, marking it as one of the top urban school districts in the country for gains in performance among its students. (Serious money attached, not just […]

This NFZ article will be more speculation and ideas than news analysis. It is sparked by a news article: I’m sitting here reading a story on New York’s summer school system and Mayor Bloomberg’s efforts to end social promotion.
There are several conflicting forces at play here. We know that students who are promoted […]

Briefly mentioned in yesterday’s NFZ was the Kansas Board of Education’s latest step in its continuing struggle to stick its fingers in its collective ears and ignore a century and a half of accumulating scientific knowledge. Since knuckle-dragging willful ignorance like this is a danger to the nation, I figure it warrants a closer […]

Several of the questions raised by my brief analysis of the NAEP data in yesterday’s post wondered why high school advancement wasn’t reflecting gains in elementary school. I suggested that more challenging curriculum would help: as American high schools currently stand, there is plenty of room for higher expectations.
Turns out students agree. So […]

The National Assessment of Educational Progress, traditionally known as “the nation’s report card,” recently made its latest results available. These are from the 2004 round of testing, the latest since 1999. Some of the information is good; for example, reading scores for 9-year-olds have improved significantly over 1999 and African-American students decreased the […]

The Zone is not in the habit of shilling for products — we don’t even have ads yet, except for the technological infrastructure that brings you our scintillating observations — but I just finished George Lakoff’s Don’t Think of an Elephant! , and wanted to note my reaction:
Ho. Lee. Cow.
This is a […]

I’m going to lead off with something my friend and fellow NFZer William said to me when I pointed out one of the URLs I’m going to point out here. It makes a good starting point:
When did we have to start saying these things? “Book burnings aren’t right.” “Torture is bad.” […]