Education Next articles from September 2007

Education Next archives from September 2007

Good news for presidential candidates: the public supports a wide range of education reforms.(from the editors)
September 22, 2007... Put foreign policy first, theorist Niccolo Machiavelli once advised his 16th-century Florentine prince. It's not bad advice for 21st-century presidential candidates, either. National security, not education, will be the overriding issue in the...

Evidence-based studies.(correspondence)(Letter to the editor)
September 22, 2007... We are accustomed to spirited intellectual debate and critique, but not to the kind of misinformation in Eric Hanushek's article ("The Confidence Men," check the facts, Summer 2007). We'd like to set the record straight. First, our...

Los Angeles update.(correspondence)(Brief article)
September 22, 2007... Since these articles ("Power Struggle in Los Angeles," forum, Summer 2007) were written, Los Angeles mayor Villaraigosa has publicly announced that he will not continue to press the courts to support his legislation. And the mayor's slate of...

Invest in Indianapolis.(correspondence)(Letter to the editor)
September 22, 2007... David Skinner's article ("Indianapolis Mayor Bart Peterson," features, Summer 2007) aptly describes Indianapolis's efforts to reform and improve public education. The legislature's leadership and commitment for the past six years, combined...

Adequacy suits.(correspondence)(Letter to the editor)
September 22, 2007... In "Adequately Fatigued" (legal beat, Summer 2007), Joshua Dunn and Martha Derthick describe court decisions in Texas, Massachusetts, and New York that suggest the courts may be growing weary of educational adequacy cases. They significantly...

Pre-K for all.(correspondence)(Letter to the editor)
September 22, 2007... "Pre-K 101" (features, Summer 2007) sets up a false choice between schools and community child-care centers as the providers of pre-K. The reality is that we need both, and this debate shouldn't be allowed to sidetrack one of the most dramatic...

Teacher dispositions.(correspondence)(Letter to the editor)
September 22, 2007... "Return of the Thought Police?" (research, Spring 2007) says there is a growing "approach to teacher education and certification based on ideology rather than teaching skills or mastery of content knowledge." The author, Laurie Moses Hines,...

Educational software.(correspondence)(Letter to the editor)
September 22, 2007... The statement by Todd Oppenheimer in "Selling Software" (features, Spring 2007) that Renaissance Learning's Accelerated Reader has not been "held up to serious scrutiny" is simply inaccurate. There currently are several articles on Accelerated...

The enforcers: parents may gain right to sue over NCLB.(the legal beat)(No Child Left Behind Act of 2001)
September 22, 2007... Adversarial legalism, which has become the American way of government, is likely sooner or later to be wedded to No Child Left Behind (NCLB), which embodies America's hope for closing the achievement gap. Two advocacy groups have urged that the...

What Americans think about their schools: the 2007 Education Next-PEPG survey.(feature)(Program on Education Policy and Governance)(Report)
September 22, 2007... Americans both care about their schools and want them to improve. Though adults give the nation's public schools only mediocre grades--a plurality confer a "C"--they are willing to invest more money in public education and they are reasonably...

All over the map: explaining educational outcomes of the Moving to Opportunity program.(feature)
September 22, 2007... The Moving to Opportunity (MTO) program sought to relocate poor families out of high-poverty neighborhoods by providing housing vouchers. Five urban housing authorities (Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York) participated in the...

Will NCLB hit the wall?(forum)(No Child Left Behind Act of 2001)(Essay)
September 22, 2007... Congress hopes to finish work on the reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) before the presidential primary season begins in January 2008, though it is unclear whether that deadline will be met. The six-year-old law was...

New kids on the block: results from the Moving to Opportunity experiment.(research)(Report)
September 22, 2007... If only we could move poor kids out of high-poverty, inner-city neighborhoods. Moving to more affluent neighborhoods would surround children with more educated adult role models, stronger educational values, and better community resources. The...

Do districts fund schools fairly? In Texas, differences are larger within districts than between.(research)(Report)(Case study)
September 22, 2007... State and federal school accountability programs hold schools to specific standards of academic performance and assume each school is given a fair shake at accomplishing the task of educating its students. But are schools, in fact, treated...

The odd couple: Murray and Rothstein find some unexpected common ground.(check the facts)
September 22, 2007... Checked: Charles Murray, "Intelligence in the Classroom," Wall Street Journal, January 16, 2007 Richard Rothstein, Class and Schools: Using Social, Economic, and Educational Reform to Close the Black-White Achievement Gap (Economic...

What begat the achievement gap? History of Chicago schools provides few answers.(Schools Betrayed: Roots of Failure in Inner-city Education)(Book review)
September 22, 2007... Schools Betrayed: Roots of Failure in Inner-city Education By Kathryn M. Neckerman University of Chicago Press, 2007, $29; 252 pages. The most urgent issue in American education for the last half century has been the failure of...

Bum rap: on the debate circuit with Central High.(Cross-X: The Amazing True Story of How the Most Unlikely Team from the Most Unlikely of Places Overcame Staggering Obstacles at Home and at School to Challenge the Debate Community on Race, Power, and Education)(Book review)
September 22, 2007... Cross-X: The Amazing True Story of How the Most Unlikely Team from the Most Unlikely of Places Overcame Staggering Obstacles at Home and at School to Challenge the Debate Community on Race, Power, and Education By Joe Miller Farrar,...

The War Against Hope: How Teachers' Unions Hurt Children, Hinder Teachers, and Endanger Public Education.(Book review)
September 22, 2007... The War Against Hope: How Teachers' Unions Hurt Children, Hinder Teachers, and Endanger Public Education. Rod Paige (Thomas Nelson). How do teachers' unions stifle school reform? Rod Paige counts the ways: they refuse to allow great...

Brookings Papers on Education Policy 2006-2007.(Brief article)(Book review)
September 22, 2007... Brookings Papers on Education Policy 2006-2007. Tom Loveless and Frederick M. Hess, editors (Brookings Institution Press). This conference volume addresses two big issues: smaller classes and smaller schools. Its ten chapters, written by...

40 Days and 40 Nights: Darwin, Intelligent Design, God, OxyContin, and Other Oddities on Trial in Pennsylvania.(Monkey Girl: Evolution, Education, Religion, and the Battle for America's Soul)(Brief article)(Book review)
September 22, 2007... 40 Days and 40 Nights: Darwin, Intelligent Design, God, OxyContin, and Other Oddities on Trial in Pennsylvania. Matthew Chapman (HarperCollins). Monkey Girl: Evolution, Education, Religion, and the Battle for America's Soul. Edward Humes...

Collateral Damage: How High-Stakes Testing Corrupts America's Schools.(Brief article)(Book review)
September 22, 2007... Collateral Damage: How High-Stakes Testing Corrupts America's Schools. Sharon L. Nichols and David C. Berliner (Harvard Education Press). The antitesting crowd can barely contain its excitement over this latest volume from Arizona State's...

Powerful Teacher Education: Lessons from Exemplary Programs.(Brief article)(Book review)
September 22, 2007... Powerful Teacher Education: Lessons from Exemplary Programs. Linda Darling-Hammond (Jossey-Bass). Linda Darling-Hammond sets out to combat the "myth" that "good teacher education programs are virtually nonexistent." She builds the book...

Urban hero: wrong role for school teachers.(cultured)(Freedom Writers)(Movie review)
September 22, 2007... Freedom Writers Viewed April 14, 2007 The movie scene has become familiar--the American high school class close to rioting, the racial tensions boiling, the curses flying across the room--and then, the breakthrough moment. Through an...

Baby, think it over: technology meets abstinence education.(school life)
September 22, 2007... The baby is screaming. My wife is tapping its back. It keeps screaming. She shakes it. More high-pitched baby screams. Finally, I shout, "Throw it in the freezer!" My wife laughs. She turns the little black doll over and fiddles...