A Critique of The Markup’s Investigation into Predictive Models of Student Success

harlan@harris.name (Harlan Harris) — Mon, 29 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Recently, tech-journalism site The Markup ran a long, detailed, critical investigation of a predictive machine learning model used by the State of Wisconsin to identify public school students at risk of not graduating. I mostly agree with the conclusions of the piece -- the system appears not to be fit for purpose and needs to be substantially improved -- but I want to comment on several aspects of the model and the Markup’s reporting. Although I know nothing about the Wisconsin model beyond what is reported, I know a lot about predictive student success risk models, having led a team of data scientists who built related models used by colleges and universities when I worked at EAB from 2014 through 2016.

Online publishing, micropayments, and warm fuzzy feelings

harlan@harris.name (Harlan Harris) — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 00:00:00 +0000

The problem of how to monetize online publishing, particularly news publishing, is neither new nor all that surprising. But the ongoing lack of a solution is steadily eating into news organizations across the country. Yesterday, the Times announced it was going to buy out or lay off 8% of its newsroom staff, despite being the best national newspaper in the country and probably the one making the best use of Internet technologies. (Their interactive graphics are some of the best around.) How can newspapers make money on the web? Ad revenue is inadequate, and people won’t generally pay for content. This post from a journalism blog at Harvard discusses why micropayments will never work:

Journalism on Harlan D. Harris

A Critique of The Markup’s Investigation into Predictive Models of Student Success

Online publishing, micropayments, and warm fuzzy feelings