Education Next articles from January 2004

Education Next archives from January 2004

The more you have ... Fiscal troubles plague the public schools.(from the editors)(Letter to the Editor)
January 1, 2004... The gloomiest fiscal picture in two decades is clouding" American education, shouts the Boston Globe. A union leader laments the"fiscal instability from the state, from the federal government, so that the supports aren't there for education:' A...

Vouchers in the courts.(correspondence)(Letter to the Editor)
January 1, 2004... James E. Ryan provides a balanced and comprehensive description of the next round in the legal fight over vouchers ("The Neutrality Principle," Feature, Fall 2003). State constitutional provisions serve as the most immediate impediment to...

The SAT.(correspondence)(Letter to the Editor)
January 1, 2004... I was one of the two psychometricians on the panel that advised the College Board on the issue of whether the SAT scores of disabled students who take the test with accommodations should be "flagged" (see Miriam Kurtzig Freedman, "Disabling the...

Licensing leaders.(correspondence)(Letter to the Editor)
January 1, 2004... Frederick M. Hess seems obsessed I with the need to establish a "deregulation" route to identify and prepare school leaders ("Lifting the Barrier," Forum, Fall 2003). His model seems to suggest that just about anyone with a master's degree,...

Teacher pay.(correspondence)(Letter to the Editor)
January 1, 2004... Richard Vedder points out that teachers are not paid as badly as everyone thinks ("Comparable Worth," Forum, Summer 2003). Unions like to use measures of annual salary, while Vedder suggests that hourly wages provide a more accurate gauge of...

The Asian-white gap.(correspondence)(Letter to the Editor)
January 1, 2004... Jens Ludwig ("The Great Unknown," Check the Facts, Summer 2003) raises a number of important questions about the U.S. Department of Education's study of the black-white test-score gap. But he ignores entirely the fact that their analysis and...

Fiscal indiscipline: why school districts can't downsize.(forum)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2004... When the economy's bubble burst and tax receipts began to plunge, many a school district found itself bleeding red ink. Even districts that seemed healthy discovered gaping holes in their budgets--holes that antiquated accounting systems and...

Mounting debt: the long economic boom enabled school districts nationwide to fund expensive reforms and hefty pay raises. Now, however, they are finding it nearly impossible to cut costs and balance their budgets. What makes it so tough for districts to downsize?(forum)
January 1, 2004... In April 2003,Joseph Olchefske, a nationally recognized reformer, announced his intention to resign as superintendent of the Seattle Public Schools. Surprisingly, given his background in investment banking and his previous experience as the...

Academic freedom: the typical urban school district's personnel and budgeting systems leave principals without much say in hiring teachers or allocating resources. The decentralization movement may just change that.(forum)
January 1, 2004... The Los Angeles Unified School District is the second largest school system in the nation--and perhaps the worst. Slightly less than half of its 75,000 employees are classroom teachers, meaning that Los Angeles spends just 35 percent of its...

Competing visions: President Bush proposes to refocus Head Start on the teaching of academic skills. Should Democrats go along?
January 1, 2004... PROJECT HEAD START WAS created during the heady, idealistic days of the mid-1960s. Through two seminal victories, the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the civil-rights movement had won equality in the...

Recycling reforms: the U.S. Department of Education has created an office in charge of funding innovation. Can we avoid the mistakes of the past?
January 1, 2004... IN NOVEMBER 2002, WITH PRESIDENT BUSH'S signing of the Education Sciences Reform Act, the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Educational Research and Improvement, or OERI, was dissolved. Out of the reorganization arose two new offices...

Autism and the inclusion mandate: what happens when children with severe disabilities like autism are taught in regular classrooms? Daniel knows.
January 1, 2004... Daniel walks into his kindergarten classroom and drops his outerwear, backpack, and bus harness in a tangled heap in the middle of the floor. Daniel has a singular focus this morning: building a bridge and a house out of Lincoln Logs. He...

The knowledge guild: teachers will learn that industrial-style unionism and genuine professionalism don't mix.
January 1, 2004... TEACHING ASPIRES TO BECOME A PROFESSION, yet it faces two daunting obstacles. First, public school teachers cling to unprofessional salary schedules and terms of employment that make it impossible to pay them based on their performance and...

Why choice is good for teachers: traditionalists and progressives coexist warily in today's public schools, creating fragmented institutions with no common ethos. Letting teachers start their own schools may bring an end to the pedagogical holy wars.
January 1, 2004... THREE YEARS AGO I VISITED AN ALTERNATIVE HIGH SCHOOL IN NEW England. It is a terrific place--small, personalized, staffed by deeply committed teachers, and attended by students who seem to approach learning with enthusiasm. Nearly all of its...

Money and motivation: other nations elicit better performance from their students through the use of high-stakes graduation exams. Along these same lines, Michigan now links college scholarships to high-school test results.
January 1, 2004... WHY DON'T AMERICAN HIGHSCHOOL students perform as well as their peers in other industrialized nations? One reason is that they devote less time and intellectual energy to their schooling. Learning takes work, and that work is generally not...

To catch a cheat: the pressures of accountability may encourage school personnel to doctor the results from high-stakes tests. Here's how to stop them.(Research)
January 1, 2004... THE COSTANO SCHOOL IN EAST PALO ALTO, CALIFORNIA, ACHIEVED national recognition in 2000 for overcoming enormous obstacles to achieve academic success. Its principal, Marthelia Hargrove, was designated Principal of the Year by the National...

The revolving door: a path-breaking study of teachers in Texas reveals that working conditions matter more than salary.(research)
January 1, 2004... EXPERIENCED TEACHERS ARE, on average, more effective at raising student performance than those in their early years of teaching. This gives rise to the concern that too many teachers leave the profession after less than a full career and that...

Still dreaming: the quest for equal opportunity continues.(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... The American Dream and the Public Schools By Jennifer Hochschild and Nathan Scovronick Oxford University Press, 2003, $35; 301 pages. In The American Dream and the Public Schools, Jennifer Hochschild and Nathan Scovronick offer a...

Eye of the beholder: private and public schools, close up.(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... All Else Equal: Are Public and Private Schools Different? By Luis Benveniste, Martin Carnoy, and Richard Rothstein RoutledgeFalmer, 2002, $19.95; 224 pages. All Else Equal's central claim is that privately run schools are not...

Ignoring advice: the disillusionment of public school politics.(education matters to me)
January 1, 2004... Back in 1976, when I was a crackerjack reporter for the Woodlawn High School Calumet, I interviewed the Baltimore County school district's superintendent, Joshua Wheeler. The conversation was to provide my introduction to the politics of public...