Author
Chester E. Finn, Jr.
Articles
A Battle Begun, Not Won
The following essay is part of a forum, written in honor of Education Next’s 10th anniversary, in which the editors assessed the school reform movement’s victories and challenges to see just how successful reform efforts have been. For the other side of the debate, please see Pyrrhic Victories? by Frederick M. Hess, Michael J. Petrilli, [...]
Education Data in 2025
Fifteen years hence, we will know exactly how well our schools, teachers, and students are doing
The Preschool Picture
Universal preschool will be a boon for middle-class parents. How it will help poor kids catch up is not so obvious.
Selective Reporting
Quality Counts 2001, A Better Balance: Standards, Tests, and the Tools to Succeed by the editors of Education Week
Just the Facts
School Figures: The Data Behind the Debate
by Hanna Skandera and Richard Sousa
Hoover Institution, 2003, $15; 342 pp.
Faulty Engineering
The diversity of values within American society renders public schools ill-equipped to produce the engaged citizens our democracy requires
Lost at Sea
Early 20th century Progressive reformers established elected school boards as a means of shielding public school systems from the politics and patronage of corrupt city governments. Citizens, rather than political dons or their favored appointees, would govern the community’s schools with the community’s interests at heart. Today, however, elected school boards, especially in America’s troubled [...]
Book Alert
The New Division of Labor: How Computers Are Creating the Next Job Market, by Frank Levy and Richard J. Murnane; Class and Schools: Using Social, Economic, and Educational Reform to Close the Black-White Achievement Gap, by Richard Rothstein; Leaving No Child Behind? Options for Kids in Failing Schools, by Frederick M. Hess and Chester E. Finn Jr., eds.; Standards Deviation: How Schools Misunderstand Education Policy, by James P. Spillane
Paying Teachers Properly
That the uniform salary “schedule” for teachers is obsolete and dysfunctional is a truth widely accepted but rarely challenged.
Blog Posts/Multimedia
Jack Jennings and a Half-Century of School Reform
Much as I respect and admire Jack Jennings, in spite of all his experience in this field, his main tool remains federal legislation, which I’ve come to believe is almost always wielded clumsily in pursuit of nails that either won’t budge at all or end up bent.
Can Schools Rekindle the American Work Ethic?
To do this our teachers and policymakers will need to reverse now-widespread practices and beliefs.
Should Schools Turn Children into Activists? And Should Uncle Sam Help?
Schools have a special responsibility to the young people in their care, which is to be exceptionally careful about providing lessons and activities of a political nature or enlisting them in adult causes, however worthy some may deem them.
The Green-Tea Party
Coming out of a year that has left me ever less enamored of both our major political parties, their polarized and gridlocked behavior on Capitol Hill, their uninspiring candidates and ratty presidential campaigns, not to mention their antics in many a statehouse, I’m ready for a promising, credible third party.
Unsolved Problems—and Signs of Hope—as 2012 Dawns
We need to focus on the barriers that keep us from making major-league gains–not cultural issues, parenting issues, demographic issues, or other macro-influences on educational achievement, but obstacles that competent leaders and bold policymakers could reduce or eradicate if they were serious.
Texas Hit the Accountability Plateau, Then the Rest of the Country Followed
“Consequential accountability” corresponded with a significant one-time boost in student achievement. As an early adopter, Texas got a head start on big achievement gains, and also a head start on flat-lining thereafter.
The Euro and the Common Core
If you hope the Euro crashes, that this week’s Brussels summit fails, and that European commerce returns to francs, marks, lira, drachma, and pesetas, you may be one of those rare Americans who also seeks the demise of the Common Core State Standards Initiative in U.S. education.
Too Many Cooks, Too Many Kitchens
It’s well past time to rethink, re-imagine, and reinvent education governance for the twenty-first century.
On Abolishing the Department of Education
Maybe it never should have been carved out of the old Department of Health, Education and Welfare in the first place, but the fact is that Jimmy Carter, politically indebted to the N.E.A. for his election (and unable to get out from the commitment he had made to them in return), winkled it through Congress in 1979.
The Unilateral Repeal of NCLB and the 2012 Election
The Obama administration’s new waiver plan doesn’t officially repeal the No Child Left Behind Act, but it is tantamount to making large-scale amendments to it. Which it does unilaterally, without even a thumbs-up from Congress.
Power to the Principals
Podcast: Paul Peterson and Chester Finn discuss a study of Chicago principals who were given the power to choose which teachers to fire.
Duncan vs. Perry
The gloves are off. What vestiges remained of bipartisanship on education in Washington has been buried. And education may yet turn into a major issue in the 2012 presidential race.
Up With Teachers, Not So Much With Unions
The new Phi Delta Kappan/Gallup survey makes clear that most adults value their children’s teachers.
NCLB Waivers
Podcast: Paul Peterson and Chester Finn discuss efforts by Arne Duncan to give states some leeway with respect to NCLB.
Is the Charter-School Movement Stuck in a Rut?
As the U.S. charter fleet sails past the 5,000-school and two-decade markers, there is reason to worry that it’s getting complacent, unimaginative, and self-interested.
GOP Candidates on Education
Podcast: Paul Peterson and Chester Finn discuss education policy and the Republican candidates for president.
This Glass is Half-Empty, Maybe Two-Thirds
Sure, it’s great that minority students have made gains, but what does that do for our international competitiveness if the average score is unchanged or declining?
Let’s Talk Education Reform: A GOP candidate’s speech
The Republican presidential field is beginning to take shape, and candidates and maybe-candidates are figuring out where they stand and what to say. Sooner or later, they will need to say something about education. May we suggest a few talking points?
How to Run Public Schools in the 21st Century
Almost everyone who cares about revitalizing American primary-secondary education senses that many of its fundamental structures are archaic and its governance arrangements dysfunctional. Yet any effort to address those problems typically leads either to a glazed look on the visage of the putative audience or else to eye-rolling and shoulder-shrugging.
Good for Texas. Good for America?
Deep in the heart of Texas is where some education-policy lessons might best stay. But they tend not to. Rick Perry’s imminent entry into the 2012 GOP presidential race suggests that, for the second time in less than a dozen years, we could see a Texas governor try to make the federal role in education conform to his own preconceptions and lessons learned in Austin.
Forget Finland: What Ontario Can Teach Us about Good Governance
I’ve long admired Marc Tucker’s tireless efforts to get American educators and reformers to understand and appreciate how other nations address challenges that often resemble our own. Which isn’t to say I always agree with him. And that’s true of his latest paper, too.
Bill Bennett, James Madison, and National Curricular Materials
A whole bunch of folks have spent a whole bunch of time in recent weeks declaiming that Arne Duncan is a sinner if not a lawbreaker because his Race to the Top program encouraged states to adopt the new “Common Core” academic standards. I guess people were born too late—or have short memories. Arne Duncan has plenty of precedents.
Fordham Responds to the Common Core “Counter-Manifesto”
The “counter-manifesto” released this week in opposition to national testing and a national curriculum is full of half-truths, mischaracterizations, and straw men. But it was signed by a lot of serious people and deserves a serious response.
The Problems of Education Governance in Twenty-First Century America
The shortcomings of elected local school boards are only the most obvious of the many problems of education governance in the United States in 2011.
Teachers Unions Here and There
I don’t always agree with Marc Tucker but he knows a heckuva lot about how other countries organize their education systems; and it turns out that knowledge extends to how their teacher unions have evolved, what roles the unions play, and how their bargaining processes work. The differences set forth in his exceptionally interesting new [...]
The Rebirth of the Education Governor
A new crop of reform-minded governors is reclaiming its territory in an efflorescence of leadership and state-level initiatives. With states running out of money and education consuming so many billions, eking greater bang from the available bucks is both irresistible and unavoidable.
Have Reformers Won the War of Ideas?
Ed Next editors Mike Petrilli and Chester E. Finn, Jr. debate whether the war has been won and what needs to happen next.
The Rope with which We Hang Ourselves
V. I. Lenin may or may not have actually declared that “the capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them,” but something of the sort is occurring nowadays between American educators and the Communist regime in Beijing. Consider what happened last week in Chicago.
Best and Worst of 2010
Ed Next’s Mike Petrilli and Chester E. Finn, Jr. discuss the best and worst developments for education policy in 2010, including the release of Waiting for Superman, the publication of teacher scores by the L.A. Times, the Race to the Top, and the development of Common Core standards.
Sputnik for the 21st Century
On Pearl Harbor Day 2010, the United States (and much of the rest of the world) was attacked by China.
Re-Imagining Local Control
Writing last week in the Wall Street Journal, Diane Ravitch challenged resurgent Congressional Republicans to return K-12 education to “local control” and to repudiate and reverse the nationalizing/federalizing tendencies of No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top, Common Core standards, etc.
After the Election, What Will States and Districts Do?
Education Next’s Paul Peterson and Chester E. Finn, Jr. talk this week (Nov. 23) about how the Republican landslide will affect education policymaking at the state and local levels. Will state and local governments figure out how to downsize? Can they accomplish reform through reallocation?
Seeds of Reform Sown by Moynihan (and Coleman)
The Coleman Report and its data have been exhaustively analyzed and reanalyzed. But this key finding has never been successfully challenged: School inputs have little correlation with pupil achievement and differences in achievement cannot be significantly accounted for by differences in school resources.
Thanks but No Thanks, NAEP
The latest 12th grade National Assessment results were released this morning. The big news, alas, isn’t news at all, which is that proficiency levels remain dreadfully low in both reading and math.
How Our Best and Brightest Measure Up
Education Next’s Paul Peterson and Chester E. Finn, Jr. discuss a new study finding that U.S. schools are producing a smaller percentage of high-achieving math students than are schools in many other countries.
The New Congress and Education Policy
Paul Peterson and Chester E. Finn, Jr. talk about what the election results are likely to mean for federal education policy.
Mixed Signals on Quality for Preschoolers
Open the Wall Street Journal’s recent spread on “The Turf War for Tots” and learn there that Hollywood is trying to jettison the time-tested cognitively-based “Sesame Street” approach to pre-school television in favor of Disney-style entertainments and faddish “social” skills.
The Welcome Earthquake
As Election Day 2010 arrives, the education stakes are big, even if few voters are placing this issue atop their priorities. The unions may never be the same again. Nor the Democratic Party. Nor maybe, even, the GOP.
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