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Sector Spotlight
Report Release: Reforming Teacher Pensions for a Changing Work Force
New Education Sector report examines teacher pensions and details the problems facing current state pension programs.
Sport or Not? A Question for the Courts
Senior Policy Analyst Elena Silva interviewed by the New York Times on Title IX.
Teachers Unions as Agents of Reform
Brad Jupp, an architect of Denver's landmark performance-based teacher pay system, ProComp, is an outspoken advocate of both labor organizing and quality education for disadvantaged kids. In this interview, Jupp talks about ProComp, his views on teacher unionism, and the future of the teaching profession.
Education Sector Welcomes Three New Board Members
Education Sector's board of directors names three prominent leaders in the fields of education and journalism to the board: David W. Breneman, Richard Lee Colvin, and Peter McWalters.
For-profit colleges: Do they shortchange students?
Policy Director Kevin Carey comments on a recent Senate HELP Committee hearing on for-profit colleges.
Analysis and Perspectives
What We're Reading
Education Dragonslayer
Originally appeared in New York Post on September 18, 2005.
- Author:
- Andrew J. Rotherham
- Web Address:
- http://www.nypost.com/
- Read more about
- Politics of Education
By Jay P. Greene
Rowman & Littlefield, 2005, 256 pages, $24.95
Education policy, rarely offers epic figures as alluring as Guinevere, yet Jay Greene says we are nonetheless deluded by mythology when we think about our schools.
In "Education Myths" Greene sets out to debunk his list of 18 prevalent educational misconceptions and myths. Some of his "myths" cover spending, class-size reduction initiatives and school vouchers, debates well-known to even casual observers of education. Others, such as the often-arcane disputes about special-education policies and how to most accurately compute graduation rates, are only hotly debated within education circles.
The prolific Greene, who heads a new education research center at the
This doesn't mean he's all wrong. On the contrary, Greene's work on graduation rates was instrumental in forcing states to more forthrightly report high-school-completion data.
But there are interests groups and wild claims on all sides of education debates and they don't get equal scrutiny here. Greene enjoys punching left, but generally avoids criticizing the right.
For example, he debunks the myth that public schools aren't as good as they used to be. But he uses an obscure 1993 quote to portray Clinton-era Education Secretary Richard Riley as the myth's purveyor. This line was no staple for Riley, but was standard fare among more than a few conservative commentators.
Likewise, Greene devotes more time to unsettled debates than to issues where public policy clearly runs against the grain of the empirical evidence — such as the attachment of the public and policymakers to the worth of "certified" teachers in the face of abundant evidence that today's policies not only fail to ensure quality or add value, but may actually dissuade would-be teachers. School choice, a Greene favorite but an issue where the research raises as many questions as it answers, garners much more attention.
What's most striking is how little impact most of these myths have on education policymaking today. Greene wants to debunk misconceptions about the harms of accountability, school choice and spending. Yet choice is slowly but steadily expanding in education, schools are increasingly held accountable for results and few states or the federal government are on much of an educational spending binge. Greene may be too late; many of the dragons he seeks to slay don't have much fire left anyway.