Education Next articles from March 2008

Education Next archives from March 2008

Today's education-industrial complex: why aren't schools an issue in the 2008 election?(from the editors)(Editorial)
March 22, 2008... Results from the latest international tests arrived just as Education Next was going to press. In math and science, the United States again trailed the average international score achieved by students in the 57 test-taking nations that together...

Separating boys from girls.(correspondence)(Letter to the editor)
March 22, 2008... Single-sex education programs (see "Learning Separately," features, Winter 2008) have been operating in South Carolina public schools since 2004. Two-thirds of South Carolina's school districts offer some form of single-sex education. That's...

School boards.(correspondence)(Letter to the editor)(Brief article)
March 22, 2008... Christopher Berry and William Howell ("Accountability Lost," research, Winter 2008) present an interesting academic study about whether student achievement data have an impact on school board elections. What would be even more relevant to know,...

Teacher values.(correspondence)(Letter to the editor)
March 22, 2008... Robert Slater ("American Teachers," features, Winter 2008) draws a mystifying series of conclusions from his research on what American teachers believe. I agree that educators have struggled in recent years to separate the teaching of values...

Pension plans.(correspondence)(Letter to the editor)
March 22, 2008... Robert Costrell and Michael Podgursky ("Peaks, Cliffs, & Valleys," features, Winter 2008) make a compelling case for states to shift public pensions away from defined benefit plans to defined contribution plans. The former are ill equipped to...

Tax credits.(correspondence)(Letter to the editor)
March 22, 2008... I generally agree with Dr. Wilbur Rich's well-detailed recipe ("St. Louis Blues," features, Winter 2008) for legislative failure regarding the 2005 and 2006 tax credit proposals in Missouri. Like any good connoisseur of school politics, Rich...

Charter wave.(correspondence)(Letter to the editor)(Brief article)
March 22, 2008... Andy Smarick's article ("Wave of the Future," features, Winter 2008) outlines a roadmap for the successful development of a system of charter schools. Currently, New Orleans is the only city in the nation with the conditions in place to follow...

"It's being done".(correspondence)(Letter to the editor)(Brief article)
March 22, 2008... In his review of my book "It's Being Done": Academic Success in Unexpected Schools ("Inside the Testing Factory," book review, Winter 2008), Nathan Glazer wonders what I would think of Tyler Heights, described in Tested: One American School...

Free and appropriate: parent's wealth muddies special-education tuition case.(the legal beat)
March 22, 2008... On the first day of its 2007-08 term, the Supreme Court heard oral argument in a case that pitted the nation's largest school district against a wealthy entertainment executive. At issue in New York City Board of Education v. Tom F. was whether...

New York City's education battles: the mayor, the schools, and the "rinky-dink candy store".(feature)
March 22, 2008... It is not easy getting an interview with Mayor Michael Bloomberg--he's a busy man. He oversees a city of more than 8 million and is thinking (or not, depending on the headline of the day) of running for president of the United States, when he...

Troublemaker: the education of Chester Finn.(feature)(Excerpt)
March 22, 2008... In February 2008, Princeton University Press will release Troublemaker, the memoir of Education Next senior editor and veteran education reformer Chester E. "Checker" Finn Jr. Currently president of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation and senior...

The Vallas effect: the supersized superintendent moves to the Superdome city.(feature)(Paul Vallas)
March 22, 2008... The 14-year-old in the discipline school, let's call him Kareem, was having a bad day. He'd gotten into a food fight, and he was in big trouble. He didn't want to face the principal and whatever punishment was going to be meted out. So he...

Going for the gold: secrets of successful schools.(feature)
March 22, 2008... Public school leaders throughout the United States are approaching consensus about what it takes to educate all students well: more class time, smaller schools, a college preparatory curriculum, instructional coaching for teachers, and...

Voting down vouchers: lessons learned from Utah.(feature)
March 22, 2008... In 1999 the Ohio Supreme Court found the Cleveland school voucher program to be constitutional, thereby allowing the three-year-old initiative to continue. Shortly thereafter, the anti-voucher coalition filed suit in federal court, asking for a...

Teachers for America: catalysts for change or untrained temporaries?(forum)
March 22, 2008... Schools across the nation are confronting the challenge to place an effective teacher in every classroom. In the provisions of No Child Left Behind, alternative licensure programs, and teacher pay plans, education reformers seek ways to improve...

Education and economic growth: it's not just going to school, but learning something while there that matters.(research)
March 22, 2008... Even before and certainly ever since the 1983 release of A Nation at Risk by the National Commission on Excellence in Education, national economic competitiveness has been offered as a primary reason for pushing school reform. The commission...

Charter politics: why some places have more students in charter schools and others have fewer.(research)
March 22, 2008... By most measures, the charter school reform movement has been remarkably successful. Since the first law authorizing charter schools was passed in Minnesota in 1991, 39 other states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico have all adopted...

No choice in Milwaukee!?! Remarkable finding by an un-credible study.(check the facts)(Wisconsin Policy Research Institute )
March 22, 2008... Checked: David Dodenhoff, "Fixing the Milwaukee Public Schools: The Limits of Parent-Driven Reform." Wisconsin Policy Research Institute Report, Vol. 20, No. 8 (October 2007). Heads understandably turned last October when the Milwaukee...

The good, the bad, and the ugly: an honest look at union hero Albert Shanker.(Critical essay)
March 22, 2008... Tough Liberal: Albert Shanker and the Battles over Schools, Unions, Race, and Democracy By Richard D. Kahlenberg Columbia University Press, 2007, $29.95; 552 pages. "Madman or Visionary?" reads the publicity material that...

The Educational Morass: Overcoming the Stalemate in American Education.(Brief article)(Book review)
March 22, 2008... The Educational Morass: Overcoming the Stalemate in American Education. Myron Lieberman (Rowman and Littlefield). The equal-opportunity, grand-daddy longlegs of all curmudgeons, Myron Lieberman, manages in one volume to savage teachers...

No Remedy Left Behind: Lessons from a Half-Decade of NCLB.(Brief article)(Book review)
March 22, 2008... No Remedy Left Behind: Lessons from a Half-Decade of NCLB. Frederick M. Hess and Chester E. Finn Jr., editors (AEI Press). Few would dispute the claim that No Child Left Behind needs an overhaul. Yet with the deadline for the law's on-time...

Education for a New Era: Design and Implementation of K-12 Education Reform in Qatar.(Brief article)(Book review)
March 22, 2008... Education for a New Era: Design and Implementation of K-12 Education Reform in Qatar. Dominic J. Brewer et al. (Rand-Qatar Policy Institute). Any volume endorsed by Dr. Sheikha Abdulla Al-Misnad, president of the University of Qatar, and...

Schools and the Equal Opportunity Problem.(Brief article)(Book review)
March 22, 2008... Schools and the Equal Opportunity Problem. Ludger Woessmann and Paul E. Peterson, editors (MIT Press). Can schools overcome the highly variable influences of family so that the opportunities of all students are equalized? Since 1966, when...

The Dissenting Tradition in American Education.(Brief article)(Book review)
March 22, 2008... The Dissenting Tradition in American Education. James C. Carper and Thomas C. Hunt (Peter Lang Publishing). [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] American education has a long and well-documented history of dissenters. During the past 25 years,...

Standards-Based Reform and the Poverty Gap: Lessons for No Child Left Behind.(Brief article)(Book review)
March 22, 2008... Standards-Based Reform and the Poverty Gap: Lessons for No Child Left Behind. Adam Gamoran, editor (Brookings Institution Press). This conference volume has an identity crisis. Its marketers clearly want to ride the No Child Left Behind...

Wikipedia or wickedpedia? Assessing the online encyclopedia's impact on K-12 education.(what next)
March 22, 2008... Mention Wikipedia within the ivy-covered walls of the academy and you'll find no shortage of opinions, ranging from wildly enthusiastic to mildly apocalyptic. That's no surprise: the web site, available for free and developed by an army of...

Screens down: students teach the wonders of technology.(school life)
March 22, 2008... I received the notice via snail mail, interestingly enough, that my 9th-grade summer school students would each arrive with an Apple iBook in tow. The attached questionnaire asked how comfortable I felt with technology in the classroom, and...