The education blog world is kicking off this last week before school starts by extending a warm welcome to Jennifer Jennings, the blogger formerly known as Eduwonkette. After she heard that other researchers were being accused of posting the incisive education statistics analysis she herself had authored, Jennings decided to shed her cloak of anonymity — in articles that appeared this morning in New York Magazine and Education Week, which hosts her blog. On Eduwonkette, Jennifer reveals herself in typically irreverent fashion: through a comic strip.
Jennifer is a graduate student in sociology at Columbia who has authored papers on “bubble kids” in Texas and on the impact of accountability systems on students and schools. For encomia, check out Education Notes Online, the Education Optimists, and the NYC Education News Yahoo group. It’s clear that, far from being a “con artist,” as a DOE spokesman recently called her, Eduwonkette Jennifer is actually a gifted scholar with rare interests in applying an on-the-ground mentality to her research and making her scholarship accessible and intelligible to those outside the academy. We’re thrilled to be able to offer some of her New York City-centered analysis here on GothamSchools.