Education Next articles from September 2006

Education Next archives from September 2006

Learning from catastrophe theory: what New Orleans tells us about our education future.(from the editors)(Editorial)
September 22, 2006... Did Katrina blow away a city's educational cobwebs? Will New Orleans enjoy a school renaissance? Can catastrophe theory explain the properties of school reform as well as the dynamics of physical systems? In this issue's cover story,...

The Bostonian.(Letter to the editor)
September 22, 2006... Tom Payzant had an extraordinary ten-year run as superintendent of schools in Boston, as described in Alexander Russo's fine story ("The Bostonian," features, Summer 2006). Although it's hard to remember now, Boston public schools were in free...

Unions and politics.(correspondence)(Letter to the editor)
September 22, 2006... It's hard to disagree with the analysis by Frederick Hess and Martin West ("Strike Phobia," features, Summer 2006) detailing how standard union contracts stifle education innovation, management flexibility, and results. The real debate is over...

Parsing partisanship.(Letter to the editor)
September 22, 2006... The Summer 2006 issue of Education Next contains accusations about the research done by the Center on Education Policy ("Donkey in Disguise," check the facts). The work by the Center on Education Policy (CEP) on the No Child Left Behind Act,...

High school.(Letter to the editor)
September 22, 2006... I read David Ferrero's review essay "Tales from the Inside: Five Books about High School" (book reviews, Spring 2006) with great interest. I grew up in a suburban community that went through a "population explosion" in the early 1960s and was...

Keeping out the Christians.(correspondence)
September 22, 2006... Naomi Schaefer Riley claims that the University of California admitted only 8 students through its "admission by exception" policy last year, when the number 0was actually more than 1,000 students ("Keeping Out the Christians," features, Summer...

Virtual legality: unions and home schoolers attack internet education.(the legal beat)
September 22, 2006... In the past, schools have tried to bring technology to the student in the classroom. Now technology makes it possible to take the student out of the classroom and even the building. In virtual public schools, students learn at home under...

Hope after Katrina: will New Orleans become the new city of choice?(Hurricane Katrina)
September 22, 2006... A student starting public school in New Orleans in the fall of 2005 had little reason to be hopeful about her education. Of her 65,000 schoolmates in the New Orleans Public Schools (NOPS), over half of those taking the state's high-stakes tests...

Home is where the heart is: can Cory Booker save Newark's schools?
September 22, 2006... It's April 9 and the Mediterranean Manor is rocking. As a large bus outside the downtown Newark reception hall cranks out B-list disco hits, hundreds of low rollers coming to the $50-a-plate Cory Booker fundraiser inch through a maze of velvet...

Don't sweat it: how some schools do--and don't do--PE.(physical education )
September 22, 2006... Overweight children would not be the first thing a visitor to Grafton, West Virginia, would think of when seeing the small farms that cling to steep hillsides and cultivate the bottomland along the Tygart River as one drives into town. Like...

Miracle math: a successful program from Singapore tests the limits of school reform in the suburbs.
September 22, 2006... It was another body blow to education. In December of 2004, media outlets across the country were abuzz with news of the just-released results of the latest Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) tests. Once again...

National standards: should the federal government tell schools what to teach?
September 22, 2006... At a time of increasing global economic competition, continued signs of backsliding in state oversight of schools, and growing impatience with No Child Left Behind (NCLB), the debate over national education standards has heated up. Chester...

Not your father's PE: obesity, exercise, and the role of schools.(physical education)
September 22, 2006... American children are gaining weight at an alarming rate. Since the 1960s, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the percentage of American six- to eleven-year-olds who fall into the CDC's highest weight...

The why chromosome: how a teacher's gender affects boys and girls.
September 22, 2006... Gender gaps in educational outcomes are a matter of real and growing concern. We've known for a long time, since the 1970s, that girls outscore boys in the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) reading tests, while boys tend to...

Is your child's school effective? Don't rely on NCLB to tell you.(No Child Left Behind Act of 2002)
September 22, 2006... Checked: No Child Left Behind Act of 2002, Title I: Adequate Yearly Progress Florida A+ Plan: School Grades No Child Left Behind (NCLB), the federal school-accountability law, is widely held to have accomplished one good thing: require...

Battling the progressives: what you don't know will hurt you.(The Knowledge Deficit: Closing the Shocking Education Gap for American Children )(Book review)
September 22, 2006... The Knowledge Deficit: Closing the Shocking Education Gap for American Children By E. D. Hirsch, Jr. Houghton Mifflin, 2006, $22.00; 169 pages. This is the first time that I feel compelled to acknowledge from the get-go that I am...

Beyond the Melting Pot: two well-regarded liberals take on multiculturalism.(Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers)(Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny)(Book review)
September 22, 2006... Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers By Kwame Anthony Appiah W. W. Norton, 2006, $23.95; 196 pages. Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny By Amartya Sen W. W. Norton, 2006, $24.95; 215 pages. The...

Collective Bargaining in Education: Negotiating Change in Today's Schools.(Book review)
September 22, 2006... Collective Bargaining in Education: Negotiating Change in Today's Schools. Edited by Jane Hannaway and Andrew J. Rotherham (Harvard Education Press). It is not clear what justifies use of "change" in the title of this book. Since the days...

Educational Entrepreneurship: Realities, Challenges, and Possibilities.(Brief article)(Book review)
September 22, 2006... Educational Entrepreneurship: Realities, Challenges, and Possibilities. Edited by Frederick M. Hess (Harvard Education Press). "This is the era of educational entrepreneurship," declares Education Next editor Frederick M. Hess. Should we...

Charter Schools Against the Odds: An Assessment of the Koret Task Force on K-12 Education.(Brief article)(Book review)
September 22, 2006... Charter Schools Against the Odds: An Assessment of the Koret Task Force on K-12 Education. Edited by Paul T. Hill (Hoover Institution Press). Charter schools today are an important part of the education landscape, but they are not as...

Our School: The Inspiring Story of Two Teachers, One Big Idea, and the School That Beat the Odds.(Brief article)(Book review)
September 22, 2006... Our School: The Inspiring Story of Two Teachers, One Big Idea, and the School That Beat the Odds. Joanne Jacobs (Palgrave Macmillan). [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Education critic and commentator Joanne Jacobs has done a service with this...

The cure: will NCLB's restructuring wonder drug prove meaningless?(No Child Left Behind Act )
September 22, 2006... This past spring, the U.S. Department of Education released data showing that approximately 1,700 public schools across the country were eligible for "restructuring" under the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) for 2005-06. That's up 42 percent...

The English teacher: when the lack of a cohesive curriculum comes back to bite.(school life)
September 22, 2006... I retired in 2002, after 29 years as a public-middle-school English teacher in Jackson Heights, Queens, a stable working-class neighborhood in New York City. During the course of my teaching tenure, I came to some conclusions about my...