Education Next

Newark school leaders, searching for the best way to reduce the number of teachers in order to balance the budget, have raised the possibility of teacher buyouts funded by the $100 million donation from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, reports Samantha Henry of the Associated Press. "If we could fire the 300 or 400 lowest-performing teachers, she wouldn't have a financial crisis," Newark Mayor Cory Booker said, speaking of the schools superintendent. In an article that appeared in the Summer 2011 issue of Education Next, Eric Hanushek looked at the impact on the future earnings of students, and the U.S. economy as a whole, of identifying and replacing the lowest-performing teachers.

Integration worked, so why have we rejected it? wonders David Kirp in an op-ed that appeared in Sunday’s New York Times. “If we’re serious about improving educational opportunities, we need to revisit the abandoned policy of school integration,” he concludes. In the Fall 2010 issue of Education Next, Susan Eaton of Harvard Law School and Steven Rivkin of Amherst College debated the state of the desegregation movement and research on the impact of economic and racial segregation on student achievement.