forum

The Profit Motive
Will it benefit kids?

The Private Can Be Public
During the 1999–2000 school year, public school districts spent some $35 billion on goods and services provided by private, for-profit businesses—about 10 percent of the nation’s annual K–12 education budget.
By John E. Chubb

Bear Market
The recent entry of for-profit schools into the K–12 arena is an intriguing trend.
By Henry Levin

Defining Merit
How should we pay teachers?

Rewarding Expertise
For most of the century just past, and into the current one, school districts have paid their teachers according to a “single salary schedule,” a pay scheme that bases an individual teacher’s salary on two factors: years of experience (steps) and number of education credits and degrees (lanes).
By Allan Odden

Let the Market Decide
A 1962 RAND Corporation study on teacher pay described teacher salary schedules in the following way:
By Michael Podgursky and Dale Ballou

features

A School Built for Horace
Tales from a start-up charter school
By Theodore R. Sizer and Nancy Faust Sizer

Romancing the Child
Progressivism’s philosophical roots
By E. Donald Hirsch Jr.

Cheating to the Test
What to do about it
By Gregory J. Cizek

research

Hidden Demand
Who would choose private schools?
By Terry M. Moe

Changing the Profession
How choice would affect teachers
By Caroline M. Hoxby

check the facts

Deconstructing RAND
Improving Student Achievement: What NAEP State Test Scores Tell Us by David W. Grissmer et al.
By Eric Hanushek

RAND versus RAND
What Do Test Scores in Texas Tell Us? by Stephen P. Klein et al.
By Eric Hanushek

letters from the editor

Evidence Matters
Linking scholarship and reform

book review

Distorting Dewey
Left Back: A Century of Failed School Reforms by Diane Ravitch Progressive ideals, lost in translation
By Gerald Grant and Jeffrey Mirel

Civics Lesson
Diversity and Distrust: Civic Education in a Multicultural Democracy by Stephen Macedo Asking the schools to mold good citizens—again
By Rogers M. Smith and Stephen G. Gilles

education matters to me

Graduation Wish
It was 110 degrees outside when I arrived at my children’s school to pick them up, but the icy glares of my fellow moms threatened to freeze me to the sidewalk. The headlines were catching up with me.
By Lisa Graham Keegan