Author

Chester E. Finn, Jr.

    Author Website: http://www.edexcellence.net/


    Author Bio:
    Chester Finn, Jr. is a scholar, educator and public servant who has been at the forefront of the national education debate for 35 years. Born and raised in Ohio, he received his doctorate from Harvard in education policy. He has served, inter alia, as a Professor of Education and Public Policy at Vanderbilt, Counsel to the U.S. ambassador to India, Legislative Director for Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and Assistant U.S. Secretary of Education for Research and Improvement. A senior fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution and chairman of Hoover’s Koret Task Force on K-12 Education, Finn is also President of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation. He serves on the board of several other organizations concerned with primary-secondary schooling. The author of 16 books and more than 400 articles, his work has appeared in such publications as The Weekly Standard, Christian Science Monitor, Commentary, The Public Interest, The Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, New York Times, Education Week, Harvard Business Review and Boston Globe. Dr. Finn is the recipient of awards from the Educational Press Association of America, Choice Magazine, the Education Writers Association, and the Freedoms Foundation at Valley Forge. He holds an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Colgate University. He and his wife, Renu Virmani, a physician, have two grown children and two adorable little granddaughters.  They live in Chevy Chase, Maryland.


Articles

Education Data in 2025

Fifteen years hence, we will know exactly how well our schools, teachers, and students are doing

Winter 2010 / Vol. 10, No. 1


E Pluribus Unum?

Two longtime school reformers debate the merits of a national curriculum

Spring 2009 / Vol. 9, No. 2


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.

Fall 2009 / Vol. 9, No. 4


More Money for Less Accountability?

I don’t think so!

Spring 2009 / Vol. 9, No. 2


Troublemaker

The education of Chester Finn

Spring 2008 / Vol. 8, No. 2


Crash Course

NCLB is driven by education politics

Fall 2007 / Vol. 7, No. 4


What Innovators Can, and Cannot, Do

Squeezing into local markets and cutting deals

Spring 2007 / Vol. 7, No. 2


A New New Federalism

The case for national standards and tests

Fall 2006 / Vol. 6, No. 4


Selective Reporting

Quality Counts 2001, A Better Balance: Standards, Tests, and the Tools to Succeed by the editors of Education Week

Fall 2001 / Vol. 1, No. 3


Just the Facts

School Figures: The Data Behind the Debate
by Hanna Skandera and Richard Sousa
Hoover Institution, 2003, $15; 342 pp.

Spring 2004 / Vol. 4, No. 2


Faulty Engineering

The diversity of values within American society renders public schools ill-equipped to produce the engaged citizens our democracy requires

Spring 2004 / Vol. 4, No. 2


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 [...]

Summer 2004 / Vol. 4, No. 3


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

Winter 2005 / Vol. 5, No. 1


Paying Teachers Properly

That the uniform salary “schedule” for teachers is obsolete and dysfunctional is a truth widely accepted but rarely challenged.

Winter 2005 / Vol. 5, No. 1


Tread on Me—but Lightly

The Era of Big Government Is Complicated

Summer 2005 / Vol. 5, No. 3


Things Are Falling Apart

Can the center find a solution that will hold?

Winter 2006 / Vol. 6, No. 1


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.

03/08/2010

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.

03/05/2010

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.

03/03/2010

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.

02/23/2010

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.

02/23/2010

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.

01/28/2010

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.

01/07/2010

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.

01/06/2010

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.

12/15/2009

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.

12/10/2009

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.

12/10/2009

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.

12/04/2009

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.”

11/25/2009

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.

11/24/2009

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.

11/19/2009

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.

11/04/2009

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).

10/29/2009

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.

10/26/2009

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?

10/22/2009

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.

10/14/2009

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.

10/13/2009

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.

10/08/2009

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.

10/01/2009

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.)

09/24/2009

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.

09/24/2009

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.

09/21/2009

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.

09/17/2009

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.

09/10/2009

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.

08/28/2009

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.

08/26/2009

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.

08/22/2009

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