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The Detracking Movement
The practice that has come to be known as “tracking” began as a response to the influx of immigrant children into America’s schools during the early 20th century. To educate this newly diverse student...
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Reframing the Mind
Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences (Basic Books, 1983) Multiple Intelligences: The Theory into Practice (Basic Books, 1993) Intelligence Reframed: Multiple Intelligences for the 21st...
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The Least Common Denominator
A Nation at Risk argued that much of America’s decline in academic achievement could be traced to the “cafeteria-style curriculum” or “curricular smorgasbord” offered to high-school students. The...
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Home Schoolers Strike Back
To their surprise, California’s home-schooling parents found out in February that they were scofflaws. A state appellate court ruled in In re Rachel L. that state law requires all children to be taught...
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Home Schooling Goes Mainstream
“I never really told anybody about my music at school, only my really close friends,” Cheyenne Kimball told People Magazine in 2006. “Then [school officials] actually aired the show around the whole...
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Virtual School Succeeds
As the visitor approaches the handsome new quarters of Florida Virtual School near Orlando’s Valencia Community College, nothing tells him that he is about to enter the nerve center of one of the...
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New Book by E.D. Hirsch Challenges Reformers of All Stripes
The Making of Americans: Democracy and Our Schools E.D. Hirsch, Jr. Yale University Press August 2009 This provocative new book by E.D. Hirsch (dedicated to the late Al Shanker) poses fundamental...
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No More Revenge of the Nerds
According to the Wall Street Journal, Texas high school students can now receive additional course credit toward graduation for participation in athletics. Even before the Texas Board of Education and...
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The College Cruise
The New York Times this week hosted a forum on summer homework, and while I voted “Yea!” many contributors and commenters thought summer homework a terrible intrusion on June, July, and August. They...
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More and More, School Just Isn’t ‘Meaningful’
The University of Michigan Institute for Social Research has an ongoing project called Monitoring the Future. Among its valuable collections of data is an annual survey of high school seniors, a...
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Bahrain, Exeter Offer Clues About the Gender Gap in Math
Why do boys outperform girls in math, especially at the highest levels of math achievement? Two sets of economists released papers this summer examining the size of the gender gap in math achievement...
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If Students Are Career-Oriented, It Doesn’t Show Up in Majors
With all the talk about workplace-readiness in education reform, one would think that students who enter college would look carefully at the coursework that leads to high-paying jobs. That’s the...
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Does Teaching More Science Content Produce Better Scientists?
In the latest issue of American Educator magazine, biologist Paul Gross tries to make sense of the findings of a study comparing the scientific knowledge and skills of top American and Chinese...
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Happy T-1 Peoples Day
Controversies surrounding the celebration of Columbus Day raise a number of interesting questions. Unfortunately, many of the new answers offered are at least as simplistic and historically false as...
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E Pluribus Unum?
The push for a national curriculum is gaining momentum as reformers press states to acknowledge “world class” benchmarks for student achievement. The topic had been dormant since Clinton-era efforts...
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Florida’s Online Option
Education reform often appears a zero-sum battle , one that pits crusaders demanding accountability and choice against much of the traditional education establishment, including teachers unions. The...
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Book Alert: Intelligence and How to Get It
There is no end to the debate over intelligence: how to define and measure it, how much of it is hereditary versus environmentally determined, and the extent to which it can be altered via purposeful...
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Return of the Thought Police?
College campus battles over academic freedom and free speech have become a media staple. One widely publicized 2004 case concerned Ed Swan, an education student at Washington State University (WSU),...
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Can Tracking Improve Learning?
Tracking students into different classrooms according to their prior academic performance is controversial among both scholars and policymakers. If teachers find it easier to teach a homogeneous group...
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Book Excerpt: Richard Whitmire Reads from Why Boys Fail
Ed Next is teaming with authors of newly released books to provide 15-minute audio excerpts from those books for your listening pleasure. First up, Richard Whitmire, author of Why Boys Fail, reads from...
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