In exchange for autonomy from school districts, charter schools promise to achieve measurable progress in children’s performance. But the movement is based on a dubious premise.
Education in America
Posted inEducation in America
The Voucher Seduction
Vouchers have new political power derived from their potent appeal to minorities and the poor. Liberals and defenders of public education had better take notice.
Posted inBooks, Arts and Culture
Rank Class
Nicholas Lemann’s The Big Test 12.02.99 | reviewed by Peter Schrag The late Albert Shanker, longtime president of the American Federation of Teachers, sometimes made the facetious suggestion that if children were all awarded college diplomas at birth, knowledge would be pursued for its own sake and a great many of the problems of American […]
Posted inEducation in America
Controversy: The Black-White Test Score Gap
Claude M. Steele Some people who would like very much to right racial inequality will not like the idea, proposed by Christopher Jencks and Meredith Phillips, that reducing the black-white test score gap could be a prime target of public policy. African Americans have been hammered by this test score gap for decades. Focusing on […]
Posted inEducation in America
The New School Wars: How Outcome-Based Education Blew Up
It seemed like a conservative idea; then progressive educators got hold of it. Now a firestorm has erupted that could jeopardize the effort to raise national curriculum standards.
Posted inEducation in America
Separatist But Equal?
Detroit’s all-black academies are neither as bad as the critics claim nor as uplifting as their defenders insist. Considering the alternatives, they are worth a try.
Posted inEducation in America
The Myth of Public School Failure
Public schools are actually performing remarkably well. What they need is not radical reform but more support.
Posted inLaw and Justice
Quiet Success: Where Managed School Integration Works
Despite a skeptical Supreme Court and a growing separatist movement, many communities across the country are showing that a flexible approach to busing is still the best way to integrate schools.
Posted inCivil Rights in America
Can Democracy Save Chicago’s Schools?
With much fanfare, Chicago has moved to decentralize control of what some have called the worst public school system in America. But reform has been financially and politically crippled from the start.
