Author

Peter Meyer

    Author Website:


    Author Bio:
    Peter Meyer is a former News Editor of Life magazine and the author of numerous nonfiction books, including the critically acclaimed The Yale Murder (Empire Books, 1982; Berkley Books, 1983) and Death of Innocence (G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1985; Berkley Books, 1986). Over the course of his three-decade journalism career Meyer, who holds a masters degree in history from the University of Chicago, has touched down in cities around the globe, from Bennington to Baghdad, and has written hundreds of stories, on subjects as varied as anti-terrorist training for American ambassadors to the history of the 1040 income tax form. His work has appeared in such publications as Harper's, Vanity Fair, National Geographic, New York, Life, Time and People. Since 1991 Meyer has focused his attentions on education reform in the United States, an interest joined while writing a profile of education reformer E.D. Hirsch for Life. Meyer subsequently helped found a charter school, served on his local Board of Education (twice) and, for the last eight years, has been an editor at Education Next. His articles for the journal include “The Early Education of our Next President” (Fall 2008), “New York City’s Education Battles: The mayor, the schools, and the `rinky-dink candy store’” (Spring 2008), “Learning Separately: The case for single-sex schools” (Winter 2008), and “Can Catholic Schools Be Saved?” (Spring 2007). Meyer also writes and edits, mostly on education, for the American Enterprise Institute, the Manhattan Institute, and the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, where he is a Senior Visiting Fellow.


Articles

Can Catholic Schools Be Saved?

Lacking nuns and often students, a shrinking system looks for answers

Spring 2007 / Vol. 7, No. 2


Brighter Choices in Albany

Reformers in New York’s capital have brought high-quality charter schools to scale, giving hope to a generation of disadvantaged kids.

Fall 2009 / Vol. 9, No. 4


Learning Separately

The case for single-sex schools

Winter 2008 / Vol. 8, No. 1


New York City’s Education Battles

The mayor, the schools, and the “rinky-dink candy store”

Spring 2008 / Vol. 8, No. 2


The Early Education of Our Next President

Not much in public schools

Fall 2008 / Vol. 8, No. 4


Baby, Think It Over

Technology meets abstinence education

Fall 2007 / Vol. 7, No. 4


A Board’s Eye View

Lessons from life in public office

Spring 2004 / Vol. 4, No. 2


Blog Posts/Multimedia

Field Notes: My Piece of Kafka

If I were to write an education book, it would be called, “Don’t Know Whether to Laugh or Cry: Life on the School Board.” Of all the emotions accompanying these events — and school board meetings are more full of emotion than anything else – the feeling of not knowing whether to laugh or cry is one of the more common and consistent ones – for me.

09/02/2010

Forget STEM: “To the dreadful summit of the cliff”*

Mark Bauerlein has a wonderfully refreshing piece in the new Education Next. It is especially welcome to those beleaguered liberal arts and humanities folks among us who feel so un-21st century. But I hope that even die-hard periodic tablists among you would be impressed by Bauerlein’s subtle skewering of the current head of the National Endowment of the Arts, Rocco Landesman.

08/18/2010

Stop the Presses!*

Another front-page story in the New York Times this morning is sure to stoke the Gotham education fires. “Triumph Fades on Racial Gap in New York City Schools” makes it pretty clear that the recent goal line adjustment made by New York State’s new education Commissioner David Steiner did not affect all groups equally.

08/16/2010

The Gray Lady, Part 2: The Other Shoe Drops

What seems central to Winerip’s reportorial DNA is a sympathy for the little guy, whether the disabled kid or the handicapped school. Though I can’t claim to have studied his writings thoroughly (nor have I communicated with him), if Winerip does have political or ideological views about the education system, it would appear that he sees the thing through the prism of leaving no child or school behind – that is, before allowing any child or school to get ahead, we must pick up those behind. The market place, which allows success and failure, is a threat; the social safety net is wide and deep.

08/12/2010

Money Talks – But Does It Educate?

This is American education’s sixty-four-thousand-dollar question. Or is it $64 million? Billion? Or, how about $26 billion? That’s the number moving through the Capitol at the moment.

08/05/2010

Sexting and Other Constitutional Issues

It is hard to be a reporter in America for very long, including as one trying to fathom our richly diverse public education system, without having to deal with a Constitutional issue.

07/28/2010

Voice in the Wilderness: Save NCLB!

Despite the bashing the ten-year-old federal law has been taking–much of it deserved–on the ground, in the provinces NCLB has succeeded in beginning a much-needed change in the culture of public education: from a system focused on adults to one looking behind all the curtains to see how kids are doing. It hasn’t been a pretty launch, of course, but the ship is only barely out of port.

04/28/2010

Union Dues

The fall 2009 issue of Ed Next included an article I wrote about some remarkable charter schools in Albany. In that article, I described how the teachers union had fought hard to limit the role charters could play in Albany and elsewhere in New York. Richard Iannuzzi of the NYSUT claims that “New York’s anti-union charter spokesmen misstated” the union’s position on charter schools.

12/09/2009

The Real “Crisis” in Catholic Education?

A story in the October 12 issue of Time Magazine on the “crisis” in Catholic schools, brought me back to a question I have been asking myself for several months: what’s the connection between the health of Catholic schools and the health of the Catholic church?

10/20/2009

The List

The other day I delivered to my school board president, via email, a list. “This is what I found in my ‘followup’ folder for just the last month!” I wrote. “Obviously, we can’t get it all in at a single meeting, but can we chip away at it?”

10/09/2009

School Board as Cheerleader, Leader, and Micromanager

I recently got a wake-up call from a fellow school board member, upset about a comment I made to a reporter that turned up in a page-one story that morning. Was it a mistake? And should I have talked about it? To the press?

09/28/2009

Charter Schools in Albany

Podcast: Peter Meyer tells Education Next how the city of Albany hit the jackpot: high-quality charter schools, and lots of them.

09/04/2009

Trench Warfare on the Board of Ed

I was the infamous “rogue” board member, the person that school board associations give seminars about.

09/01/2009

Sponsored Results
Sponsors

The Hoover Institution at Stanford University - Ideas Defining a Free Society

Harvard Kennedy School Program on Educational Policy and Governance

Thomas Fordham Institute - Advancing Educational Excellence and Education Reform


Most Popular Articles