Celebrating 25 years of Education Week "For twenty-five years Education Week has been the standard for news and views on American education. In this new publication they offer a rich trove of past opinion pieces from some of America's best education thinkers. This is a great collection of some of the best back-page editorials all in one book." -Paul D. Houston, executive director, American Association of School Administrators, Arlington, Virginia "Finally! Here's a book filled with thought-provoking, relevant discussions about important issues in education. I can't wait for their Greatest Hits, Volume II." -Rafe Esquith, 5th grade teacher at Hobart Boulevard Elementary School, Los Angeles, California, and author, Teach Like Your Hair's on Fire and There Are No Shortcuts "The Last Word chronicles the wisdom and insight of a generation of courageous voices who have put truth to power regarding the importance of shifting the fundamental architecture of education reform. Historian John Hope Franklin said it best when he called public education 'the national responsibility.'" -Wendy D. Puriefoy, president, Public Education Network, Washington, D.C.
"For twenty-five years our professional discourse has been enriched by Education Week's Commentaries - which are always informative, sometimes inspirational, and frequently controversial. What a pleasure to read the best of the bunch all in one place!" -Susan Fuhrman, president, Teachers College, Columbia University
Table of Contents
Foreword by Jay Mathews. Preface. PART ONE: THE ART OF TEACHING. 1. Epitaph for an English Teacher (Howard Good). 2. "Too Smart to Be a Teacher" (James R. Delisle). 3. No More Silver Bullets: Let's Fix Teacher Education (Vartan Gregorian). 4. Increase Class Size and Pay Teachers More (Saul Cooperman). PART TWO: EQUITY AND SOCIAL JUSTICE. 5. The National Responsibility for Equality of Educational Opportunity (John Hope Franklin). 6. Census 2000 Is Coming! (Harold Hodgkinson). 7. The Legacy of All Deliberate Speed (Pedro Noguera & Robert Cohen). 8. Racism Explained to My White Daughter (Patricia M. Cooper). PART THREE: TESTING WELL, TESTING FAIRLY. 9. By All Measures: Coming to Terms on World-Class Standards (Albert Shanker). 10. By All Measures: Just Another False Chase (Deborah Meier). 11. Is There a Standard for Meeting Standards? (Lewis A. Rhodes). 12. The Need for Anti-Babel Standards (Howard Gardner). 13. Confusing Harder with Better (Alfie Kohn). 14. The Tests We Need (E. D. Hirsch). 15. Multiple Measures (Ron Wolk). PART FOUR: CURRICULUM IN THE CLASSROOM. 16. Curriculum Mood Swings (Anne Wescott Dodd). 17. Why Ignore the Forms of Art (Maxine Greene). 18. Rescue the Wonder of the Printed Page: Our Kids are Smarter Than the Books We Give Them (Joy Hakim). 19. In Defense of Whimsy (Jane Dimyan-Ehrenfeld). PART FIVE: TECHNOLOGY AND LEARNING. 20. Black to the Future (Henry Louis Gates). 21. The Technology Puzzle (Larry Cuban). 22. Seeking Edutopia (Milton Chen). 23. Preparing Students for Work in a Computer-Filled Economy (Frank Levy & Richard J. Murnane). @ PART SIX: DEMOCRACY AND VIRTUE. 24. Teaching Integrity: The Boundaries of Moral Education (Edwin J. Delattre). 25. Helping Children with Scary News--Written in 1991 in Response to the Persian Gulf War (Fred Rogers and Hedda Bluestone Sharapan). 26. Teaching the "Other Half" of Democracy's Story (Ralph Nader). 27. Now Is the Time to Teach Democracy (Diane Ravitch). 28. Teaching for Wisdom in Our Schools (Robert Sternberg). PART SEVEN: CHANGE AND REFORM. 29. A Nation in Wait (John I. Goodlad). 30. Questioning Cliches of Education Reform (Chester E. Finn). 31. On Lame Horses and Tortoises (Theodore R. Sizer). 32. Is the Comprehensive High School Doomed (W. Norton Grubb and Marvin Lazerson). 33. Seek Simplicity ... and Distrust It (Lee S. Shulman). PART EIGHT: CHARTERS AND CHOICE. 34. Creating an Entrepreneurial School System (Marc S. Tucker). 35. Make Public Schools More Like Private (Adam Urbanski). 36. Charter Schools: Escape or Reform (Marc Dean Millot, Paul T. Hill, and Robin Lake). 37. For-Profit Schooling: Where's the Public Good (Linda Darling-Hammond). 38. Competing for Our Clients (Dorothy Rich). PART NINE: INSPIRING LEADERSHIP. 39. Schools Must Reconnect Pupils, Cultivate Leadership for Change (Bill Clinton). 40. Old Questions Will Produce Old Answers to the Problem of Educational Leadership (Allen Berger). 41. Pooling Our Resources (Suzanne Tingley). 42. The Principalship: Looking for Leaders in a Time of Change (Mildred Collins Pierce and Leslie T. Fenwick).
Author Biography
EDUCATION WEEK has been the newspaper of record for preK-12 education for the past 25 years. Covering education-related news, policy, and new research and practice, this weekly publication has over 200,000 readers, and its online component, EdWeek.org, averages over 1.2 million page views per month. Education Week is the flagship publication of Editorial Projects in Education (EPE), a nonprofit organization whose primary mission is to help raise the level of awareness and understanding among professionals and the public of important issues in American education. EPE first gained prominence for launching The Chronicle of Higher Education (later sold to its editors) which is the newspaper of record for higher education. Currently, EPE also publishes the monthly Teacher Magazine, annual reports on education quality, and a new job web site for educators called "Agent K-12."
