Section » Research
Evidence on the quality of for-profit higher education?
A confluence of forces: a letter requesting my participation in doctoral dissertation research from a student at the University of Phoenix and an increase in for-profit ads endorsed by the Chronicle of Higher Education in my inbox. While we all make mistakes, the attached letter...
Buffalo News endorses flawed system of teacher compensation
http://www.nicholsoncartoons.com.au Yesterday, the Buffalo News reported that the Buffalo Public Schools and the Buffalo Teachers Federation had negotiated a new teacher evaluation system. But what is particularly...
Think Tank Review: Report on Impact of Charters Overstates Results
PRESS RELEASE: ‘Everyone Wins’ ignores factors besides competition to explain marginally improved public school achievement in NYC November 17, 2009 Contact: Patrick McEwan, (781) 283-2987; (email) pmcewan@wellesley.edu Gary Miron, (269) 599-7965; (email) gary.miron@wmich.edu TEMPE, Ariz. and BOULDER, Colo. (November 17, 2009) — A...
Individual Teacher Incentives, Student Achievement and Grade Inflation
As the U.S. Department of Education moves ahead with efforts to bride states (“Race to the Top”) into its “model” of school reform, which includes some version of merit or performance pay for teachers, this recent study of the effect of performance pay for teachers on students’ test scores in Portugal is worthy of study. While there are some...
Teach for America to Replace Veteran Teachers: Part II
On June 12, Education Week’s Stephen Sawchuk published a piece (“N.C. District Lets Go of Veteran Teachers, But Keeps TFA Hires”) on the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school board’s decision to, approve plans to fire hundreds of Veteran...
“Research” on Teachers: Cover for Demand to Dump Unions, Cheapen Education
The reforms proposed in the name of making education better and the nation’s children more competitive internationally are in reality proposals to cheapen education for the poor and privatize it for the White middle class. — Gene Glass, in Fertilizers, Pills, and Magnetic Strips: The Fate of Public Education in America Over the past several...
Educational Provisions of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), also known as the stimulus package, is described as having four purposes: (1) To preserve and create jobs and promote economic recovery; (2) To assist those most impacted by the recession; (3) To provide investments needed to increase economic efficiency by spurring technological advances in science...
On Controlling for Family Influence on Achievement
As I review Berends’ and colleagues 2008 volume Charter School Outcomes (Lawrence Erlbaum), a key assumption of Anglo-American political theory, namely that just inequality is the result of “natural distinction” (as opposed to social distinction), undergirds the authors’ efforts to improve research methods for evaluating school...
The Value of Case Study Method and Design
In one of her lasts posts as a blogger for Education Week, Jennifer Jennings (better known as Eduwonkette) argued that the development of good policy “depends on compelling answers to ‘why’ questions about both the...
"The Political Economy of Educational Restructuring: On the Origin of Performance Pay and Obama’s “Blueprint” for Education," in The Phenomenon of Obama and the Agenda for Education Can Hope Audaciously Trump Neoliberalism? (Information Age Publishing)
