Daedalus articles from September 1995

Daedalus archives from September 1995

Where is American education going? Report on a convocation.
September 22, 1995... POLITICS OF EDUCATION IF, AS ALL MEMBERS OF THE CONVOCATION AGREED, the education of America's children needs to be placed high on the nation's agenda, the most pressing problem is how this can be done. It is clearly not enough to debate the...

Battleships and schools. (aims of education)
September 22, 1995... WHAT HAVE WE WANTED SCHOOLS to do for our children in this century?(1) The simple answer is "educate them." But the more complicated issue is what that answer has meant at different times in this century. Today we mostly mean "increase the...

Education reform: what's not being said.
September 22, 1995... THE SCHOOL REFORM DEBATE HAS BROUGHT a number of important issues before policymakers, the education profession, and the public. Among these are the need for content and performance standards and assessments that inform us about the extent to...

From aptitude to effort: a new foundation for our schools.
September 22, 1995... TWO CHALLENGES FACE AMERICAN EDUCATION TODAY: 1) raising overall achievement levels and 2) making opportunities for achievement more equitable. The importance of both derives from the same basic condition--our changing economy. Never before has...

Assessing assessment: lessons of innovative practice in urban schools.
September 22, 1995... IN RECENT YEARS A GREAT DEAL OF TIME and many resources have been focused on the creation and implementation of a system of national standards that could serve as a cure-all for American schools. Standards organizations are in heated competition...

Priority strategies for improved learning.
September 22, 1995... THE RASH OF STUDIES TO ENHANCE LEARNING among American children and youth that emerged in the 1980s can be divided into four categories: 1) those mainly concerned with improving test scores, which were thought to be dangerously declining and...

Silences. (education reform)
September 22, 1995... WHEN THERE IS FREEWHEELING TALK about the state of America's schools--which I experienced recently at a convocation at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences--the conventional policy wisdoms quickly emerge and ultimately dominate the...

You can't get there from here: the need for a new logic in education reform.
September 22, 1995... AMERICAN EDUCATORS ARE NOT IN THE BUSINESS of preparing all children for the twenty-first century. Instead, they are paid to decide who can learn at high levels, and who cannot. Norm-referenced intelligence tests declare half of our children...

Education reform: staking out common ground.
September 22, 1995... EDUCATION, OUR COUNTRY'S GREATEST COMMON denominator, is also its most frequent divider. Almost every polarizing issue that adults debate is overheard by children and eventually finds its way into the classroom: prayer, violence, immigration,...

Limited visions, limited means: two obstacles to meaningful education reform.
September 22, 1995... DISSATISFIED WITH QUALITY OF THE WORKERS that they have been hiring, many CEOS of major corporations believe that it is necessary to improve the quality of American public education. They also believe that it is possible to do so. After all,...

Education for the twenty-first century.
September 22, 1995... WITH DISMAL REGULARITY, we return to efforts to improve K-12 education. These efforts usually fail because education is conceived narrowly as schooling. Yet, improvements to schools do not necessarily correspond to an improvement in the education...

A call for true and equitable discourse. (education reform)
September 22, 1995... THE VIEW FROM THE CONFERENCE ROOM was of ice-covered trees on the Friday morning our meeting started. Inside, a fire burned in the fireplace and coffee and muffins were served. Some of us already knew one another and, in the rather formal...

A new challenge for American education.
September 22, 1995... THE FAULT LINE IN THE AMERICAN ECONOMY is education. This statement has been true for almost a full generation and continues to be true. Those with skills prosper; those without fall behind (see Figures 1 and 2). The good news is that we all...

Matching form and substance in American education.
September 22, 1995... "If I had $1,000 to spend on increasing children's achievement in mathematics or science, I'd invest it in Malawi, Mexico, Malaysia, or Morocco--not in Minneapolis or Memphis. From my work on problems of education quality around the world, I've...

Life, literacy, and the pursuit of challenges. (educational expectations)
September 22, 1995... "Children learn for the same reason that birds fly. They are learning machines. If your child is having problems in school, the question you should be asking yourself is: What's turning off this learning machine?" --Edward Zigler Professor of...

Education reform and the public will.
September 22, 1995... AN EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM SHOULD, I BELIEVE, serve our children in at least two important ways: it should provide the means for each child to reach his or her intellectual potential and it should prepare young people to take a place in an...

Tremors we should not ignore. (teaching problems)
September 22, 1995... THE MIDDLE SCHOOL AT WHICH I AM THE PRINCIPAL iS located in an affluent Boston suburb. It is a school that has strong support from parents, dedicated and skillful teachers, and abundant community resources. Student test scores are high, and about...

Restructuring schools for student success.
September 22, 1995... TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE IN AMERICAN EDUCATION, we must rethink how schools are designed, how teaching and learning are pursued, and how resources are allocated. If we want schools not merely to "deliver instruction" but to ensure that all students...

American education: facing up to unspoken assumptions.
September 22, 1995... AFTER THREE DECADES OF WORK in K-12 schools, higher education, alternative education, voucher plans, and educational administration, listening to many of the arguments and discussions about American education still makes me feel like I am walking...

School reform through a wide-angle lens: the consideration of context.
September 22, 1995... EDUCATION REFORM IN THIS COUNTRY is off-base because we keep trying to fix the wrong problem. We assume that the problem lies within the school and that by "fixing" the school we can fix the problem. A great deal of time and effort has been spent...

We need to know more. (educational theory)
September 22, 1995... FOR THE WHOLE OF ITS RECENT HISTORY, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and its quarterly journal Daedalus have been engaged in a continuing study of education at every level. Those who have written on the subject in the last three and a...

Had I one wish. (student skills)
September 22, 1995... GRANT ME ONE WISH TO CHANGE THE SCHOOLS, and I would not ask for more or better content, for smaller classes or longer school years, for sager teachers or saner parents, or even for more money. I would ask for student skills. My qualifications...