Education Next articles from September 2005

Education Next archives from September 2005

Looking in the wrong place: the flaw in the new federal charter school study.(from the editors)
September 22, 2005... As the proverbial story goes, a drunk, when asked where he had lost his keys, pointed off in the darkness, far from the lamppost under which he was searching. "But the light's better here," he explained. So it is with the new federal study...

A tribute to John Walton.(Obituary)
September 22, 2005... At the edge of a fault line between two tectonic plates, the Grand Teton towers some five thousand feet over Jackson Hole below. There, near his beloved family home, John Walton, a risk-taker of the kind seldom witnessed within the world of...

Getting the right principals.(correspondence)(Letter to the Editor)
September 22, 2005... I just finished reading "The Accidental Principal" by Frederick Hess and Andrew Kelly (Features, Summer 2005), with great interest and agreement. I have been in public education for 33 years, 4 of them as an adjunct professor in education...

Unflagged and unequal.(services of private schools)
September 22, 2005... When the College Board stopped flagging the SAT scores of students who took the tests with accommodations (most commonly, extended time) in 2004, it instituted a tightened eligibility process to offset the new stigma-free advantage. In his...

Mel Levine's brain.(Letter to the Editor)
September 22, 2005... It is unfortunate that Dr. Daniel Willingham took a rather superficial view of our work in reviewing Dr. Mel Levine's most recent popular press books for his article "Mind over Matter" (Check the Facts, Spring 2005). Both books, A Mind at a...

Charter school melee.(Letter to the Editor)
September 22, 2005... Ted Sizer and Michael Petrilli illustrate what makes education policy such an interesting field ("Identity Crisis," Forum, Summer 2005). The fellow writing for the "right" (Petrilli) argues for state involvement, while the fellow representing...

The inequity of adequacy.(Letter to the Editor)
September 22, 2005... Much appreciated is Joe Williams's excellent account of the fiscal-equity juggernaut that has rolled through New York State ("The Legal Cash Machine," Features, Summer 2005). The depressing results that are sure to follow from this ill-advised...

NEA sues over NCLB: the bucks are big, but the case is weak.(National Education Association sues Margaret Spellings alleging federal funding inadequate)
September 22, 2005... Last April, in a move that generated many headlines but surprised almost no one, the National Education Association (NEA) and nine school districts filed a lawsuit against Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings, claiming that federal funding...

An education mayor takes charge: the picture in New York.(Michael Bloomsburg)
September 22, 2005... In one of the more extreme examples of ancient wisdom proved true, many education reformers are wondering if they should have been more careful about what they wished for in New York City. Please let the mayor run the schools: that was the...

Private schools for the poor: education where no one expects it.(feature)
September 22, 2005... The accepted wisdom is that private schools serve the privileged; everyone else, especially the poor, requires public school. The poor, so this logic goes, need government assistance if they are to get a good education, which helps explain why,...

The new philanthropists: can their millions enhance learning?(feature)
September 22, 2005... Last February, in a speech in Washington, D.C. that drew 45 of the nation's governors as well as a hefty sample of the nation's education policy elite, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates issued a jeremiad on the state of the American high school,...

Making up the rules as you play the game: a conflict of interest at the very heart of NCLB.(No Child Left Behind)
September 22, 2005... Chicago's school district wants the federal afterschool dollar. So do many other districts. And more than two thousand private providers, for-profit and nonprofit alike, are making their own claims. More than $2.5 billion is at stake, a...

The truths about charter schools: new research from Chicago and North Carolina.(research)
September 22, 2005... With charter schools now serving approximately one million students nationwide, policymakers have been awaiting rigorous evaluations of their effects on student learning. The following articles help fill the gap. Caroline Hoxby and Jonah...

Pseudo-science and a sound basic education: voodoo statistics in New York.(check the facts)
September 22, 2005... Checked: "The New York Adequacy Study: Determining the Cost of Providing All Children in New York an Adequate Education," American Institutes for Research and Management Analysis and Planning (March 2004). "Resource Adequacy Study for...

Libertarian liberals: when the left was (sometimes) right.(whatever happened to ...?)
September 22, 2005... The revolution--the one foretold in so many platforms, political speeches, and books of the 1960s and early 1970s--didn't really happen. Of course things changed, but not exactly as promised. Though several important social and intellectual...

God: another four-letter word?(Does God Belong in Public Schools?)(Between Memory and Vision: The Case for Faith-Based Schooling)(Book Review)
September 22, 2005... Does God Belong in Public Schools? By Kent Greenawalt Princeton University Press, 2005, $29.95; 261 pages. Between Memory and Vision: The Case for Faith-Based Schooling By Steven C. Vryhof Foreword by Charles Glenn ...

The scream! Does children's literature have to be scary?(Welcome to Lizard Motel: Children, Stories, and the Mystery of Making Things Up)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
September 22, 2005... Welcome to Lizard Motel: Children, Stories, and the Mystery of Making Things Up By Barbara Feinberg Beacon Press, 2004. $23, 265 pages. Barbara Feinberg contends that most of the young adult novels that teachers assign to...

Education Myths: What Special Interest Groups Want You to Believe about Our Schools--And Why It Isn't So.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
September 22, 2005... Education Myths: What Special Interest Groups Want You to Believe about Our Schools--And Why It Isn't So. Jay P. Greene, with Greg Forster and Marcus A. Winters. Foreword by James Q. Wilson. (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.) Buried...

America's "Failing" Schools: How Parents and Teachers Can Cope with No Child Left Behind.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
September 22, 2005... America's "Failing" Schools: How Parents and Teachers Can Cope with No Child Left Behind. W. James Popham. (Routledge.) Popham has written a volume that indulges in flights of hyperbole yet retains a tone of serious scrutiny about NCLB...

The Charter School Dust-Up: Examining the Evidence on Enrollment and Achievement.(Book Review)
September 22, 2005... The Charter School Dust-Up: Examining the Evidence on Enrollment and Achievement. Martin Carnoy, Rebecca Jacobsen, Lawrence Mishel, and Richard Rothstein. (Economic Policy Institute and Teachers College Press.) School Choice: Doing It the Right...

The Birth of Head Start: Preschool Education Policies in the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
September 22, 2005... The Birth of Head Start: Preschool Education Policies in the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations. Maris A. Vinovskis. (University of Chicago Press.) [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Eminent education historian Maris Vinovskis has crafted a...

What America Can Learn from School Choice in Other Countries.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
September 22, 2005... What America Can Learn from School Choice in Other Countries. David Salisbury and James Tooley, ed. (Cato Institute.) Only a little, one might conclude, after reflecting on the essays in this collection. Although James Tooley reveals a...

Broken on the court: when the all-boy band visited the all-girl school.(Pacific Boychoir Academy students visits Julia Morgan School for Girls)
September 22, 2005... Two worlds collided today. Fortunately, only a stereotype broke during the impact. I teach at the only all-girl middle school in Oakland, California, Julia Morgan School for Girls. And today, during Monday morning assembly, the girls listened...