The Winning Ways of a Losing Strategy: Educationalizing Social Problems in the US

This post is a paper I published Educational Theory in 2008.  Here’s a link to the original. In this essay, I examine the paradox of educationalization in the American context. I argue that, like most modern Western societies, the United States has displayed a strong tendency over the years for educationalizing social problems, even though schools have repeatedly proven …

Course Syllabus — School, What Is It Good For?

This post is the syllabus for a class I taught for several years at Stanford Graduate School of Education: “School — What Is It Good For?” The course's aim is to provide a guided exploration of alternative theories of the social functions that schools serve, especially in American society.  Along the way it tries to …

School Syndrome: Understanding the USA’s Magical Belief that Schooling Can Somehow Improve Society, Promote Access, and Preserve Advantage

This post is a 2012 piece I published Journal of Curriculum Studies, which draws on my book Someone Has to Fail.  Here’s a link to a PDF of the original. An overview of the story I’m telling: The USA is suffering from a school syndrome, which arises from Americans’ insistence on having things both ways through the magical medium …

Let’s Measure What No One Teaches

This post is a piece I published in Teachers College Record in 2014.  Here’s a link to the original.   It’s an analysis of two major players in the world movement for educational accountability:  OECD’s Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), and the US No Child Left Behind law.  The core argument is this: Both PISA and NCLB, I argue, …

Do No Harm: Reflections on the Impact of Educational Research

This post is a short piece I wrote in 2011 for a special issue of the journal Teacher Education and Practice on “Enhancing Teaching and Learning Through Scholarship.” My own take is that research in education is not necessarily well positioned to enhance education; on the contrary, it often does more harm than good.  See what …

Releasing Poor Kids from Preschool Prison

This post is a piece from NPR summarizing the recent Tennessee study about the negative effect of preschool programs.  Here's a link to the original. The study showed that the preschool program in Tennessee aimed at disadvantaged students was no only ineffective at improving the academic performance of these students but actually put them at …

Citizens and Consumers — Evolving Rhetorics of US School Reform

This post is a paper I presented at a conference in Zurich in 2007 and then published as a chapter in the 2011 book, Schooling and the Making of Citizens in the Long Nineteenth Century: Comparative Visions, edited by Daniel Trohler, Thomas Popkewitz, and David Labaree.  Here's is a link to the corrected proofs of …

Course Syllabus: School — What Is It Good For?

on Course: School — What Is It Good For? This post is the syllabus of a course I taught for years at the Stanford Graduate School of Education.  It’s called "School — What Is It Good For?" I’ve copied the syllabus below, to give you an idea of what it’s all about.  The aim is …

Policy Dialogue with Sara Goldrick-Rab

This post is a dialogue I had last winter with Sara Goldrick-Rab, which covered a wide range of topics surrounding higher education policy in the US.  It was just published online by History of Education Quarterly.  Here's a link to the original.  It's part of a series of such dialogues that the journal has been …

Jay Mathews — Why Plans to Raise Educational Standards Will Never Work

This post is a piece by my favorite education writer, Jay Mathews at the Washington Post.  Here's a link to the original. It's his discussion of a new book by Tom Loveless at the Brookings Institution, Between the State and the Schoolhouse: Understanding the Failure of Common Core.  The book is an examination of why …