Wonder why? The Discovery Channel recently ran an hour-long documentary on the Costa Concordia disaster <more> A ray of hope “Fewer graduates of elite Ivy League schools are choosing careers in finance,” reported the New York Times recently <more> “It’s a great idea, but …” As a veteran observer of clever bureaucrats, I have come […]
May/June 2012
Posted inEducation
Special Report: The Next Big Test
A new wave of school reform is about to break. Will it change classrooms for the better?
Posted inMagazine, May/June 2012
Tilting at Windmills
Wonder why? The Discovery Channel recently ran an hour-long documentary on the Costa Concordia disaster. If the name of the ship’s owner, Carnival Cruise Lines, was mentioned, it was so sotto voce as to go undetected by my ear. A ray of hope “Fewer graduates of elite Ivy League schools are choosing careers in finance,” […]
Posted inEconomy, Education, K-12, Magazine, May/June 2012
The Twilight of the Civic-minded CEO
The staggeringly high regard in which Americans once held Fortune 500 CEOs has certainly diminished in recent years. Back in the day, when they could fairly be described as “job creators,” CEOs were treated like folk heroes—think Jack Welch of GE or Lee Iacocca of Chrysler. But during the 2000s, U.S. multinationals have shed nearly […]
Posted inEducation, K-12, Magazine, May/June 2012
A Test Worth Teaching To
The race to fix America’s broken system of standardized exams.
Posted inEducation, K-12, Magazine, May/June 2012
Transcontinental Education
Soon, nearly every state in the union will have the same demanding standards for what students should know. If history is any guide, a burst of innovation won’t be far behind.
Posted inEducation, K-12, Magazine, May/June 2012
Introduction: The Next Wave of School Reform
The school reform movement—the decades-old bipartisan drive to improve public education with standards and high-stakes tests—might seem, on the surface at least, to be running out of steam. Its crowning achievement, George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), which shook up public schools after it was passed in 2001, is now widely seen […]
Posted inBooks, Magazine, May/June 2012, Politics
The New Nixon
How it took a novelist to make Richard Nixon seem human.
Posted inBooks, Magazine, May/June 2012, Politics
Peaced Out
Peter Beinart warns that American Jews must refocus on the democratic and humanitarian principles of Zionism before Israel becomes simply another despotic Middle Eastern state.
