Tag Archives: book

Exactly what role should unelected judges play in making policies for our schools? What problems have been created? What can we expect in the future? These are the kinds of questions that University of Colorado at Colorado Springs professor Joshua Dunn addresses in a new iVoices podcast with my Education Policy Center friend Ben DeGrow (click the play button below to listen to the 15-minute discussion): The podcast only scratches the surface on the issue of the courts and education policy, because Joshua Dunn really knows what he’s talking about. Along with Martin West, he edited an important new book on the topic called From Schoolhouse to Courthouse — published by the Brookings Institution Press and Thomas B. Fordham Institute.

Whether you’re an education policy junkie or a concerned parent or citizen who is new to the reform debate or anyone in between, you will find some insightful and provocative arguments in the new book co-authored by Drs. Terry Moe and John Chubb titled Liberating Learning: Technology, Politics, and the Future of American Education. What’s most interesting about the book is that Moe and Chubb go beyond highlighting how technology can transform the delivery of instruction in schools. They argue that technology also holds the potential to transform the politics of education by weakening the ability most especially of teachers unions to block promising, student-friendly reforms. My Education Policy Center friend Ben DeGrow got the opportunity this week to interview Dr. Moe about his new book for an iVoices podcast (click on the play button to listen): The interview is almost 20 minutes long, but I think it will give you a good taste for what the book is about. Enjoy! In case you wondered, I have written before about the work of Terry Moe here and here (eerily, written exactly one year ago today).

In today’s Washington Post, education columnist Jay Mathews raises the question: If you had $100 billion to fix our schools, what would you do? Faithful readers know I was skeptical of the federal government’s “magical money tree” a few months ago. My sentiment hasn’t changed. Some ideas for spending 100 billion (that’s a 1 followed by 11 zeroes) new smackeroos in the education bureaucracy inevitably will be better than others, and some may end up yielding some positive results. In his column, Mathews grades five proposals for spending the money, realistically noting of those who submitted the proposals: Their goal is to get the biggest change by January 2012. I think they are dreaming. The federal stimulus is designed to save jobs, not raise student achievement. But some (not all) of the ideas are so good some states might (repeat, might) be tempted to try them. To rate the five proposals yourself, as well as five others Mathews invented, check out his blog post.