Well, other than “technology,” if I had to choose five tags to describe myself, sports, education and law would be in the top 5.  So, imagine my surprise when I was pointed to this video of a Malcolm Gladwell speech/presentation (what is it that he does exactly?) covering those three areas.  The main topic of his speech is the mismatch problem; the idea that in making hiring decisions employers regularly use metrics that are very poor predictors of success within their particular area of employment.  The substance of the presentation is certainly interesting, but here’s what I want to do with this video:

I want to use it as part of a major project for a doctoral level educational research course.  It’d be like a fact-checking exercise.  Students would have to listen to/watch the segment about hiring teachers and note each claim that Gladwell makes which is presumably research-based (i.e. that reducing class sizes from 22 to 16 will lead to increases in achievement of 5 percentile points).  Then, for each claim, they would have to find the research that either supports or refutes his claim.  The students would synthesize the research and write up their findings.  That would be fun/cool, right?

Tags: education, Gladwell, law, research, Sports

*teachers would choose not to participate in school activities because they are unsatisfied with the terms of the last three years of their contract worth an overall $25 million.

*the best teachers would be drafted onto the faculties of the lowest performing schools, and we’d spend a lot of time trying to prognosticate who is the best prospect and who has the most “upside potential” as a teacher.

*after facilitating a particularly good lesson, teachers would seek each other out and engage in a chest bump, a high five and/or some group celebration.

*brilliant statistical thinkers would spend incredible amounts of time figuring out how to analyze the schooling endeavor and to determine which schools and teachers are the best (I promise we’d do MUCH better than “number of AP courses per student“). In fact, we could judge teachers based on their VORT (value over replacement teacher).

*principals would be fired four years after leading the school to the highest possible level.

I could go on, but I’ll leave it to you, my readers. What did I leave out?

Tags: education, Sports