Education Next articles from January 2005

Education Next archives from January 2005

Paying teachers properly: the writing is on the wall--so what are we waiting for?(from the editors)
January 1, 2005... That the uniform salary "schedule" for teachers is obsolete and dysfunctional is a truth widely accepted but rarely challenged. Just about everyone with experience in public schooling knows what a teachers' salary schedule looks like. (You...

Supplemental Services.(correspondence)(Letter to the Editor)
January 1, 2005... Siobhan Gorman's "Selling Supplemental Services" (Feature, Fall 2004) was informative and engaging, but, like much of the discussion on the subject, it furthers a theme that school districts are the "bad guys." I would like to share a different...

Keeping good teachers.(correspondence)(Letter to the Editor)
January 1, 2005... If more governors had exhibited Mark Warner's excellent grasp for what it would take to improve the teaching profession, terms such as "Highly Qualified Teachers" and "High Objective Uniform State Standard of Evaluation" might not have entered...

Multiple intelligences.(correspondence)(Letter to the Editor)
January 1, 2005... It is a shame that Daniel T. Willingham is unable to link empathy and imagination with his commitment to the science of psychometrics in his stinging critique of multiple intelligences theory ("Reframing the Mind," Check The Facts, Summer...

Small schools.(correspondence)(Letter to the Editor)
January 1, 2005... The findings in Christopher Berry's "School Inflation" (Research, Fall 2004) add to an impressive mound of evidence documenting the advantages of small schools. Early-20th-century advocates of large and consolidated schools, such as James...

What's a teacher worth?(forum)
January 1, 2005... The "teacher famine," complained New York University education professor Adolphe Meyer, was caused by "economic cheeseparing.... First-rate men and women have long since turned their back on chalk and blackboard; but now it is becoming...

The moral imperative: character education, soul by soul, at the Hyde schools.(feature)
January 1, 2005... Earlier this year, at the Hyde School, a private high school in Bath, Maine, dedicated to "family-based character education," I witnessed a confrontation in an 11th-grade honors English class the likes of which, it is safe to say, few educators...

Where have all the dollars gone? No Child Left Behind lawsuit fizzles.(feature)
January 1, 2005... On December 11, 2003, the Reading, Pennsylvania, School District, on behalf of "our students and our schools," said the superintendent, filed a "Petition for Review" with the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania. And in so filing, Reading became...

Retaining retention: how Chicago changed--but ultimately saved--its controversial program to end social promotion.(feature)
January 1, 2005... In a remarkable confluence of events last winter and spring, questions about student retention became the swirling center of education debate in New York City, Chicago, and, by virtue of these cities' size and clout, throughout the country. ...

Educators and students speak: those closest to the action like the retention policy.(feature)
January 1, 2005... Despite mixed reviews from many educators--and some researchers--Chicago's policy to end social promotion has turned out to be a popular program. Surprisingly, perhaps, its most avid fans are the people most affected by it: teachers and...

Skewed perspective: what we know about teacher preparation at elite education schools.(feature)
January 1, 2005... There are some 1,400 schools of education in the United States--schools that prepare the teachers who teach most of America's elementary and secondary students. By virtue of their numbers, and the fact that some 70 percent of our three million...

Dollars and sense: what a Tennessee experiment tells us about merit pay.(research)
January 1, 2005... Though the dramatic effects that teachers have on student achievement are indisputable, the exact ingredients of effective teaching are anything but settled. Questions about how to value experience, education, certification, and pedagogical...

No distortion left behind: the New York Times education columnist gets it wrong.(check the facts)
January 1, 2005... Checked: Michael Winerip, "On Education," New York Times, January 8, 2003 to May 26, 2004 Let's stipulate that the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), the federal education law signed by President Bush in January of 2002, is a...

Who got the raw deal in Gotham? The kids or New York Times readers?(check the facts)
January 1, 2005... Checked: Michael Winerip, "On Education" columns for the New York Times, September and October, 2003 When public schools opened in New York City in September 2003 amid reports of widespread classroom overcrowding, parents, educators,...

Gray lady wheezing: the AFT hoodwinks the times.(check the facts)
January 1, 2005... Checked: F. Howard Nelson, Bella Rosenberg, and Nancy Van Meter, "Charter School Achievement on the 2003 National Assessment of Educational Progress," American Federation of Teachers, August 2004 Diana Jean Schemo, "Nation's Charter...

The softening of American education: schools in the real world.(Book Review)
January 1, 2005... Hard America, Soft America: Competition vs. Coddling and the Battle for the Nation's Future By Michael Barone Crown Forum, 2004, $22.00; 188 pages. Reading the title and subtitle and some of the jacket copy of Michael Barone's new...

Reading, writing, and willpower: getting kids to care.(Book Review)
January 1, 2005... Doomed to Fail: The Built-In Defects of American Education by Paul A. Zoch Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2004. 237 pp., $26.95. Paul Zoch manages to achieve what some might have thought impossible in the opening words of his new book,...

The New Division of Labor: How Computers Are Creating the Next Job Market.(Book Review)
January 1, 2005... The New Division of Labor: How Computers Are Creating the Next Job Market, by Frank Levy and Richard J. Murnane (Princeton University Press). On the big screen, self-aware and insubordinate robots mount organized rebellions that are...

Class and Schools: Using Social, Economic, and Educational Reform to Close the Black-White Achievement Gap.(Book Review)
January 1, 2005... Class and Schools: Using Social, Economic, and Educational Reform to Close the Black-White Achievement Gap, by Richard Rothstein (Economic Policy Institute). Nobody who followed Richard Rothstein's columns in the New York Times or his...

Leaving No Child Behind? Options for Kids in Failing Schools.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2005... Leaving No Child Behind? Options for Kids in Failing Schools, by Frederick M. Hess and Chester E. Finn Jr., eds. (Palgrave). If schools are found to be "failing" under No Child Left Behind, what happens to the children in them? According to...

Standards Deviation: How Schools Misunderstand Education Policy.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
January 1, 2005... Standards Deviation: How Schools Misunderstand Education Policy, by James P. Spillane (Harvard University Press). Spillane argues that problems in implementing education policy are due primarily to insufficient attention to the...

Field notes--02/12/03: a day in the life of an education professor who came down from the ivory tower to start a charter school.(school life)
January 1, 2005... 8:00 a.m. I got my son Thomas to school on time, but had to return an hour later for an Admission, Review, and Dismissal (ARD). Thomas is autistic--and was about to flunk physics. He had been entering middle school when I started a charter...