Spring 2001 / Vol. 1, No. 1
FEATURES
Cheating to the Test
What to do about it
A School Built for Horace
Theodore R. Sizer and Nancy Faust Sizer
Defining Merit
How should we pay teachers?
Graduation Wish
She was asking for the barest of minimums: her child’s safety
Romancing the Child
Curing American education of its enduring belief that learning is natural
Let the Market Decide
A 1962 RAND Corporation study on teacher pay described teacher salary schedules in the following way:
RESEARCH
Changing the Profession
How choice would affect teachers
Hidden Demand
Who would choose private schools?
FORUM
Rewarding Expertise
For most of the century just past, and into the current one, school districts have paid their teachers according to a “single salary schedule,” a pay scheme that bases an individual teacher’s salary on two factors: years of experience (steps) and number of education credits and degrees (lanes).
Bear Market
The recent entry of for-profit schools into the K–12 arena is an intriguing trend.
The Private Can Be Public
During the 1999–2000 school year, public school districts spent some $35 billion on goods and services provided by private, for-profit businesses—about 10 percent of the nation’s annual K–12 education budget.
The Profit Motive
Will it benefit kids?
CHECK THE FACTS
RAND versus RAND
What Do Test Scores in Texas Tell Us? by Stephen P. Klein et al.
Deconstructing RAND
Improving Student Achievement: What NAEP State Test Scores Tell Us by David W. Grissmer et al.
BOOK REVIEWS
Civics Lesson
Diversity and Distrust: Civic Education in a Multicultural Democracy by Stephen Macedo Asking the schools to mold good citizens—again
Distorting Dewey
Progressive ideals, lost in translation
