Summer 2006 / Vol. 6, No. 3
The Bostonian
Tom Payzant’s focused approach to school reform
Leaving “School” Out of High School
Our training shoes quietly slapped the rubbery surface of the track as we barreled down the final stretch. One by one we crossed the line and doubled over, desperate to catch our breath. Despite the burning in my lungs from the cold autumn air, I felt great. I had been in college for only a [...]
The Reagan Revolution in Sweden
The Market Comes to Education in Sweden: An Evaluation of Sweden's Surprising School Reforms by ANDERS BJORKLUND, MELISSA A. CLARK, PER-ANDERS EDIN, PETER FREDRIKSSON, AND ALAN B. KRUEGER
Sentences and Sensibilities
Jane Austen in Scarsdale: Or Love, Death, and the SATs By Paula Marantz Cohen St. Martin’s Press, 2006, $23.95; 288 pages. As reviewed by Diane Ravitch What would Jane Austen write if she were chronicling life in an affluent suburb of New York City? How would she probe the social dilemmas of modern life among [...]
The Qualified Teacher
The Qualified Teacher Michael Podogursky (“In Search of the Qualified Teacher,” features, Spring 2006) points out that 10 percent of teachers nationwide (unevenly distributed by field and location) don’t have regular state credentials. But he also maintains that the dearth of qualified teachers is largely a myth and the product of an inefficient, rigid compensation [...]
Florida Grows a Lemon
Florida’s supreme court is no stranger to political warfare. Before the U.S. Supreme Court decided Bush v. Gore in favor of George W. Bush, the Florida court had ruled in favor of Al Gore. And the same court played a crucial role in the state’s extraction of an $11.3 billion settlement from the tobacco industry [...]
Let the Public In
How Closed Negotiations with Unions Are Hurting Our Schools
Donkey in Disguise
Checked (all titles published by the Center on Education Policy): From the Capital to the Classroom, Year 1 (January 2003) Year 2 (January 2004) Year 3 (March 2005) State High School Exit Exams series: A Baseline Report (August 2002) Put to the Test (August 2003) A Maturing Reform (August 2004) States Try Harder, but Gaps [...]
Climb Every Mountain
The basics of No Child Left Behind (NCLB)—adequate yearly progress benchmarks, provision of supplemental services, and a “highly qualified” teacher in every classroom—are known. And the intense scrutiny of the “how to” of those basics has resulted in a mix of impassioned criticism and effusive praise. But what has been left largely unexamined in the [...]
The Union Label on the Ballot Box
How school employees help choose their bosses
Keeping Out the Christians
Evangelical high schools meet public universities
Strike Phobia
School boards need to drive a harder bargain
Keeping an Eye on State Standards
A race to the bottom?
Breakdown
The multiplicity of ills facing our nation’s public schools can depress even the most optimistic.How can we be hopeful when we have 30 million illiterate children?And it is no longer just the well-being of our poorest children that we need worry about; our top-performing public schools are no match for the international competition. China and [...]
A Culture of Complaint
Bargaining and related union activity … have introduced practices into the education system that are counterproductive.
Table Talk
Unions have an interest in good schools, and not only because students’ learning conditions are teachers’ working conditions.
Collective Bargaining
The harsh glare of state accountability systems
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