Fall 2002 / Vol. 2, No. 3
FEATURES
The Accreditation Game
The National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (known broadly as NCATE, pronounced “en kate”) was launched in 1954 by a coalition of professional organizations from across the education community. Previously, teacher-training programs had been accredited by states, regional accrediting bodies, or an association of teacher colleges, each equipped with its own benchmarks and methods […]
Full Court Press
Photograph courtesy of Howard Fuller. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, if you were a black basketball player in Milwaukee and thought you “had game,” there were two playgrounds to establish your credentials: Franklin Square and Lapham Park. I spent many hours on both courts. Although there are new playgrounds today, the tradition continues. I […]
New American Schools; bullying and school violence
New American Schools; bullying and school violence
Responsible Polling
The issue that Terry Moe raises in his article “Cooking the Questions” in the Spring 2002 issue of Education Next concerns Phi Delta Kappa’s interpretations of findings from the 2001 Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup poll of the public’s attitudes toward education. In a press release, Phi Delta Kappa concluded, “It is clear that the decade of […]
Unruly Crew
Federal legislation can move the states quite far, even if they don’t ally comply with the letter of the law.
The Virtues of Randomness
Illustration by Craig Frazier. The principle that social interventions ought to be evaluated has a long pedigree. Eager readers of the Muquadimah know that Ibn Khaldun considered competing explanations for the success of Arab regimes in the 13th century. In the 19th century, Florence Nightingale reproved the English Parliament for failing to weigh seriously the […]
Educational Jujitsu
Illustration by Dan Vasconcellos. In their continuing efforts to extract more school spending from state legislatures through the courts, advocacy groups recently acquired a powerful new weapon: the standards movement. Their success provides yet another example of the law of unintended consequences. Recently, plaintiffs in two prominent cases, in New York and North Carolina, successfully […]
Tassels on the Cheap
Illustration by John Weber. For more than a century the Department of Education has collected data on the number of high-school diplomas awarded each year. A statistic called the “degree ratio” can readily be calculated by combining these data with population figures from the U.S. Census. The degree ratio is the number of high-school diplomas […]
The Seeds of Growth
The United States became the world’s economic superpower over the course of the 20th century. But can today’s education system be counted on to fertilize growth in the future?
RESEARCH
Quantity over Quality
Ever-declining class sizes and teachers’ dwindling pay have a common explanation: the increasing price of skilled labor
Learning English
New evidence on the effectiveness of bilingual education
FORUM
Education and the Economy
For more than three decades, the United States has been scoring below the international average among participating nations on tests of math and science achievement. Again and again, civic leaders have pointed to this fact when warning that a crisis in American education may imperil continued growth in economic productivity. Yet after two decades of […]
Barren Land
During the past four decades, poor countries worldwide have experienced a massive expansion of education. But the global mandarins who thought education would lead to surging economies have been sorely disappointed
CHECK THE FACTS
Dodging the Questions
Somehow I expected more. When I challenged Phi Delta Kappa (PDK) and Gallup’s claim that they had discovered a “significant decline” in voucher support, I figured they would respond with detailed justifications of their procedures and findings. But they haven’t done that. Their response reads more like an exercise in public relations than a serious […]
BOOK REVIEWS
Women’s Work
Kingdom of Children
Culture and Controversy in the Homeschooling Movement
by Mitchell L. Stevens
Choice Words
Catholic Schools: Private and Social Effects Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2000, $100; 160 pages By William Sander The Education Gap: Vouchers and Urban Schools Brookings Institution, 2002, $28.95; 275 pages By William G. Howell and Paul Peterson, with Patrick J. Wolf and David E. Campbell As reviewed by R. Kenneth Godwin The advantage of reading The Education Gap and Catholic Schools together is in […]
