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Full-Text Articles in Education
What Can Pisa Tell Us About U.S. Education Policy?, Linda Darling-Hammond
What Can Pisa Tell Us About U.S. Education Policy?, Linda Darling-Hammond
New England Journal of Public Policy
Despite years of attention to “reform” in the United States, overall achievement on international assessments such as PISA has not improved during the period from 2000 to 2012. Reforms focused on high-stakes testing attached to sanctions, expansions of charter schools, and a market-based approach to teaching have been unsuccessful in changing outcomes. Meanwhile, growing childhood poverty, along with increasing segregation, income inequality, and disparities in school spending, have expanded the opportunity gap. Lessons from other nations and successful states indicate that systematic government investments in high-need schools along with capacity-building that improves the knowledge and skills of educators and the …
Getting To The Core And Evolving The Education Reform Movement To A System Of Continuous Improvement, Fernando M. Reimers, Eleonora Villegas-Reimers
Getting To The Core And Evolving The Education Reform Movement To A System Of Continuous Improvement, Fernando M. Reimers, Eleonora Villegas-Reimers
New England Journal of Public Policy
This article places the most recent study of PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) in historical perspective, reviewing the role of international comparisons in efforts to build public education systems as key institutions of democratic societies. It discusses the findings for the United States, examining differences with other participating countries. It also looks at a paradox. Despite the high priority education has received in the United States in the past two decades, the country underperformed in a number of indicators in the PISA in comparison with many other countries participating in the study. The authors explain the findings as the …
The National Commission On Education Excellence And Equity: Hypotheses About Movement Building, Christopher Edley Jr.
The National Commission On Education Excellence And Equity: Hypotheses About Movement Building, Christopher Edley Jr.
New England Journal of Public Policy
In 2013, the congressionally chartered national Commission on Education Equity and Excellence issued unanimous recommendations for P–12 policy changes at the federal, state, and local levels. This remarkably broad consensus, with unusual pragmatism and concreteness, is comprehensive in its scope and predominantly research based. As a clarion call and reform strategy, the commission report, For Each and Every Child, is a successor to A Nation at Risk (1983); the commission’s grand if not grandiose intention was to provide a framework for the next decade or more of nationwide policy struggle. This article, after briefly summarizing the recommendations, focuses on …
Naep State Reports In Mathematics: Valuable Information For Monitoring Education Reform, Ronald K. Hambleton, Sharon F. Cadman
Naep State Reports In Mathematics: Valuable Information For Monitoring Education Reform, Ronald K. Hambleton, Sharon F. Cadman
New England Journal of Public Policy
The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), a congressionally mandated program, can provide valuable data to educational policymakers in Massachusetts and other New England states about the status of their educational reform initiatives and their performance standards. The three purposes of this article are to describe NAEP and its goals and structure, to present some of the results of the 1992 Mathematics NAEP Assessment as an example of the utility of this national assessment program, and to highlight ways in which background data collected by NAEP can be helpful in interpreting assessment results and monitoring educational reform. The six New …
What's Wrong With Reform?, James H. Case
What's Wrong With Reform?, James H. Case
New England Journal of Public Policy
The conservative educational reform movement, which still, after more than a decade, is the dominant force in school reform, has had little success in improving schools because it is based on invalid and self-defeating theoretical assumptions. Taken together, these assumptions have the effect of substituting nostalgia — a longing for the schools the reformers themselves attended —for policy and for increasing standardization at the expense of individual growth and development. The reformers (Bloom, Hirsch, Ravitch, Finn, Bennett, et al.) have particular difficulty, given their assumptions, in dealing both with individual differences among students and with ethnic and racial differences among …
Follies: Education Reform And The Promise Of Technology, Nicholas Paleologos
Follies: Education Reform And The Promise Of Technology, Nicholas Paleologos
New England Journal of Public Policy
This article offers an overview of forty years of American education and suggests why technology may save us from ourselves.
Local Autonomy, Educational Equity, And School Choice: Constitutional Criticism Of School Reform, James J. Hilton
Local Autonomy, Educational Equity, And School Choice: Constitutional Criticism Of School Reform, James J. Hilton
New England Journal of Public Policy
Many critics of America's public education system hail parental or school choice, a program that allows public school systems to compete against one another and, under some proposals, against private educational institutions, for students and educational funding, as the answer to Americas educational crisis. Proponents argue that competition will force public schools to offer students a quality education or close. This article does not evaluate the claims of the parental-choice proposals; rather, it examines the difficulties inherent in funding such a system through traditional school finance mechanisms.
The Willis-Harrington Commission: The Politics Of Education Reform, Robert D. Gaudet
The Willis-Harrington Commission: The Politics Of Education Reform, Robert D. Gaudet
New England Journal of Public Policy
The 1980s have witnessed a nationwide movement to upgrade public education, including reform efforts in the New England states. Massachusetts periodically has grappled with the challenge of improving its schools. During the 1960s, the Massachusetts legislature authorized a thorough examination of education in the state. This mandate was carried out by a blue-ribbon panel that came to be known popularly as the Willis-Harrington Commission. In 1965, the commission issued a 624-page final report that included findings and recommendations relating to many aspects of public education in the state. This article chronicles the history of Willis-Harrington and discusses the problems that …