The Boys Left Behind
The educational achievement differences between white and minority students are well documented and universally understood. Less appreciated, however, is the gap in educational performance between the...
View Article"Losing Ground" in Education Reform
What would you think if you opened the Wall Street Journal to find an op-ed arguing that money managers should not be measured against performance benchmarks like the S&P? Further, the author...
View ArticleAdvancement
Should the grade-level a student is in be based entirely on how old he is or at least partially on how skilled he is? This is the fundamental question underlying the debate over social promotion --...
View ArticleUnion Days
There was a time when Harvard stood for the Union. Almost 600 of its sons fought for the North in the Civil War, nearly one-quarter of whom gave their lives. Only the names of those Union dead are...
View ArticleA Special Plan for Palin
Sometimes even the greatest joys bring challenge. And children with special needs inspire a special love. To the families of special-needs children all across this country, I have a message: For years,...
View ArticleChange that Won't Happen . . . Thankfully
The Democrats’ 2008 campaigns, congressional and presidential alike, were all about change. But judging by education’s share of the $819-billion stimulus package that passed the House last week, we...
View ArticleVouchers: Not Dead Yet
The Washington, D.C., voucher program is not dead yet. Congress has set its execution date, slipping a provision into last month’s omnibus spending bill to end the program unless it is re-authorized by...
View ArticleThe Problems with Special Ed
Officially reported disability rates in public schools are entirely unreliable and are almost certainly inflated indicators of how many students are actually disabled. Eventually, school and government...
View ArticleWhere the Unemployment Isn't
This year, when you hear President Obama and congressional Democrats talk about increasing government spending to create jobs, you should understand that it isn’t really about jobs. It’s about paying...
View ArticleDiane Ravitch’s Credibility in Dispute
For some reason, when a prominent policy expert completely changes her position on an issue, her views are thought to have extra credibility. So when Diane Ravitch, an education historian who served...
View ArticleBad-Mouthing Texas
President Bush's education policy has been taking some hits recently. A series of articles in the New York Times revealed that Houston schools, where current Education Secretary Rod Paige was once...
View ArticleHigh-Stakes Editorializing
The New York Times' weekly education column is perhaps the most widely read and influential newspaper space for education policy. The column, which for the last year has been under the pen of Michael...
View ArticleThe Voucher Challenge
States and cities across the nation are considering school vouchers as a way to improve their education systems. Colorado recently joined Florida, Milwaukee, and Cleveland in adopting legislation to...
View ArticleIt's Elementary
John Kerry recently unveiled his plan to make college more affordable. His "Service for College" initiative would offer students free college tuition in exchange for two years of public service doing...
View ArticleKilling Opportunity
This week a district appeals court ruled that Florida's Opportunity Scholarship Program, which provides vouchers to students in chronically failing public schools, violates the state's constitution...
View ArticleQuit Blaming The Kids
It's not us, it's the kids. That's the line we've heard for years from the defenders of the education status quo. It isn't the schools' fault that we pour so much money into education and get lousy...
View ArticleA Long-Term Choice
Nobody needs to be told that urban education is in lousy shape. Only half of America's black and Hispanic students graduate from high school. Gigantic increases in per-pupil spending over many decades...
View ArticleEducation Myths
Much of what people believe about education policy is simply not true. An examination of the evidence reveals that many common claims about education are as mythological as anything found in Homer or...
View ArticleStupid Judge Tricks
We had always heard complaints about outrageous judicial activism, where judges essentially operate as lawmakers, inventing convoluted legal rationalizations to produce their preferred policy outcome....
View ArticleThe 65-Cent Delusion
A seductively simple and horribly wrongheaded proposal is sweeping through education-reform circles and catching on with policymakers. The proposal, often called the "65-cent" solution, is to mandate...
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