Author
Chester E. Finn, Jr.
Articles
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That the uniform salary “schedule” for teachers is obsolete and dysfunctional is a truth widely accepted but rarely challenged.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
Book Alert: The Death and Life of the Great American School System
Diane Ravitch’s important new book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System, will surely stir controversy, exactly as she intends. Simply stated, she believes it should recapture the strengths of the traditional public school system, incorporate a vigorous common curriculum and renounce many of the theories, practices, policies and programs that have constituted America’s major education-reform emphases in recent years.
The New Normal for Federal Education Spending
Podcast: Education Next’s Paul Peterson and Chester E. Finn, Jr. talk this week about whether the federal share of education spending is likely to remain at 15 percent and whether the $1 billion bonus for reauthorizing ESEA this year is likely to be awarded.
The Perils of Universalism
There are regulatory domains where government is wise to make its rules universal. There are also some government programs, services and benefits that benefit from extending them to everyone or almost everyone, at least on a voluntary basis. For the most part, however, turning public-sector programs into universal free goods produces unintended and often undesirable results, while failing to solve the most urgent core problem.
Will the Common Core Standards Prove Safe and Effective?
Even though they still haven’t seen the light of day in draft form, much less been joined by any assessments, the evolving “common core” standards project of the National Governors Association (NGA) and Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) is already being laden with heavier and heavier burdens. This is enormously risky and, frankly, hubristic, since nobody yet has any idea whether these standards will be solid, whether the tests supposed to be aligned with them will be up to the challenge, or whether the “passing scores” on those tests will be high or low, much less how this entire apparatus will be sustained over the long haul.
Choice and Residential Segregation
Podcast: Education Next’s Paul Peterson and Chester E. Finn, Jr. talk this week about a new Fordham Institute report identifying 2800 public schools that only prosperous kids can attend. A more choice-based public school system, such as the one endorsed by a new Brookings Institution report, would provide more opportunities for poor kids to attend better schools, they note.
Thumbs-Up on Obama’s K-12 Education Themes
On primary-secondary education, as on most topics, Mr. Obama stayed at 30,000 feet. The main themes he sounded, however, are fine: use federal education dollars to reward success, not failure; apply Arne Duncan’s “race to the top” reform priorities to the mega-bucks Elementary/Secondary Education Act; and keep a “competitive” element in this rather than simply distributing dollars via formula. All extremely hard to do but all worth doing.
Studies Find No Effects
Podcast: Education Next’s Paul Peterson and Chester E. Finn, Jr. talk this week (Jan. 7) about whether randomized field trials in education should be abandoned, since they so rarely find that the treatments have any effects.
Racing to National Tests?
While everyone obsesses over the competition among the states for Race to the Top funding, the Education Department is readying a separate competition for less than one-tenth as much money that may nonetheless prove far more consequential for American education over the long term.
The End of the Education Debate
The education-reform debate as we have known it for a generation is creaking to a halt. No new way of thinking has emerged to displace those that have preoccupied reformers for a quarter-century — but the defining ideas of our current wave of reform (standards, testing, and choice), and the conceptual framework built around them, are clearly outliving their usefulness.
Focus of School Reform Shifting to Teachers
Podcast: Education Next’s Paul Peterson and Chester E. Finn, Jr. talk this week about whether teacher quality is eclipsing accountability and choice as a reform strategy and what role research plays in this.
Are Middle Schools or Middle Schoolers the Problem?
Podcast: Education Next’s Paul Peterson and Chester E. Finn, Jr. talk this week (Dec. 10) about why it is so hard to talk to adolescents
about school and what schools can do to encourage parent involvement.
Biggest Spender in Politics: The NEA
Podcast: Education Next’s Paul Peterson and Chester E. Finn, Jr. talk this week (Dec. 4) about what the National Education Association is buying with its campaign contributions, which total $56.3 million and exceed the campaign contributions made by any other organization in America.
Book Alert: Intelligence and How to Get It
There is no end to the debate over intelligence. The latest book-length entry into this debate is University of Michigan psychology professor Richard Nisbett’s “Intelligence and How to Get It: Why Schools and Cultures Count.”
Saving Jobs or Stimulating Reform?
Podcast: Education Next’s Paul Peterson and Chester E. Finn, Jr. talk this week (Nov. 24) about the effect of the stimulus package on education, a sector that has proven to be very good at job creation.
Election Postmortem
Podcast: Education Next’s Paul Peterson and Chester E. Finn, Jr. talk this week (Nov. 19) about what the results of the 2009 off-year elections mean for education.
Will Congress Reroute the Preschool Juggernaut?
Podcast: Education Next’s Paul Peterson and Chester E. Finn, Jr. talk this week (Nov. 4) about a bill passed by the House that would send $8 billion to states to boost the quality of preschools and expand the number of preschool spots for disadvantaged children.
Voters Choose Neighborhood Schools over Socioeconomic Diversity
Podcast: Education Next’s Paul Peterson and Chester E. Finn, Jr. talk this week (October 29) about Wake County, North Carolina, where voters earlier this month elected new school board members who have pledged to undo the county’s controversial policy of assigning students to schools based on income (to achieve diversity).
Ted Sizer, R.I.P.
Theodore R. (Ted) Sizer, who passed away last week after a long and valiant battle with cancer, was a towering figure in American education—and a wonderful guy.
The Nobel Committee Isn’t the Only One Giving Speculative Prizes
Podcast: Education Next’s Paul Peterson and Chester E. Finn, Jr. talk this week (October 22) about wishful thinking in the education reform community. Do school reformers need to temper their enthusiasm about the reform du jour?
Will Michelle Rhee Triumph?
Podcast: Education Next’s Paul Peterson and Chester E. Finn, Jr. talk this week (October 14) about education politics in Washington, D.C., where Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee recently fired 229 teachers.
The Ordeal of Equality
If Secretary Duncan is serious about “listening” to ideas for the next ESEA reauthorization (aka “fixing what’s wrong with NCLB”), he would do well to start with this important and depressing book.
Will the Federal Role in Education Double?
Podcast: Education Next’s Paul Peterson and Chester E. Finn, Jr. talk this week about Education Secretary Arne Duncan’s recent speech, the future of federal education spending, and making NCLB’s successor tighter about ends and looser about means.
Charter Schools Narrow Achievement Gaps in New York City
Podcast: Education Next’s Paul Peterson and Chester E. Finn, Jr. talk about Caroline Hoxby’s random assignment study of student achievement in charter schools in New York City.
Arne Duncan’s Planned Speech Shows Obama Administration Slowly Wading into NCLB
Secretary Duncan makes clear that he’s in no hurry to dive deep into NCLB. He’s inviting more input and advice as to how to set it right. (Never mind that there’s already a five-foot shelf of books and studies regarding NCLB’s shortcomings and needed repairs.)
What Congress Is Not Working On
Podcast: Education Next’s Paul Peterson and Chester E. Finn, Jr. gab about NCLB this week, and consider whether the law will be reauthorized by 2014, which is the deadline for all students to achieve proficiency.
Remembering Irving Kristol
So much that’s true—and important—has been written about the late Irving Kristol, I can add but a few recollections.
Charter Schools, Unions, and Linking Teachers with Student Achievement Data
Podcast: Education Next’s Paul Peterson and Chester E. Finn, Jr. discuss the week’s education news, including an announcement that a charter school in Massachusetts has signed a collective bargaining agreement with its teachers, an agreement that includes merit pay.
Will Universal Preschool Help Poor Kids?
Video: Chester E. Finn, Jr. talks with Education Next about the contradictions behind the push for for universal preschool.
New Book by E.D. Hirsch Challenges Reformers of All Stripes
This provocative new book by E.D. Hirsch (dedicated to the late Al Shanker) poses fundamental challenges to both of the dominant reform movements in American education–challenges that their leaders would do well to ponder.
Ted Kennedy, R.I.P.
More than anyone else who comes to mind in American public life, Edward M. Kennedy ascended from reprobate to icon, from an object of criticism, even ridicule, to statesman.
National Standards: Rush to Judgment?
Writing in the Baltimore Sun earlier this week, the Lexington Institute’s Robert Holland and Don Soifer reject the idea of national education standards on three grounds.
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