This is my first ever Pollyanna post. I wrote it last year in order to cheer myself about the world we live in. I think it still stands up. We Live in the Best of Times We seem to be in a world … Continue reading We Live in the Best of Times — Really
This post is a favorite piece by an old friend and terrific scholar, Harold Wechsler, who sadly died a few years ago. Here’s a link to the original, which appeared in Teachers College Record in 1981. In this paper, Wechsler explores a longstanding issue in American higher education. How do students and colleges respond when the initial core … Continue reading Harold Wechsler — Group Repulsion in the History of US Higher Ed
This post is a piece I wrote for Kappan, published in the March 2020 edition. Here’s a link to the PDF. It was also reprinted in my latest book, The Ironies of Schooling. Bureaucracies are often perceived as inflexible, impersonal, hierarchical, and too devoted to rules and red tape. But here I make a case for these characteristics … Continue reading Two Cheers for School Bureaucracy
This essay by Steve Lagerfeld was published in 2021 in Hedgehog Review. Here's a link to the original. This brief piece is a striking reflection on the evolving meaning of privilege over time. In the current period of meritocratic privilege, people acquire status by getting exclusive degrees. This gives them the right to high level … Continue reading Steve Lagerfeld — A Different Sense of Privilege
This post is an essay by David Brooks that was published in the Times on Jun 6. Here's a link to the original. He's addressing an issue that I've been exploring in my blog over the last few years, the way in which US higher education flipped the class dynamic. Top universities used to be … Continue reading David Brooks: The Sins of the Educated Class
This post is a recent essay by David Deming, an economist at the Harvard Kennedy Center and Education School, about the use of SAT and ACT scores in college admission. It appeared in Atlantic. Here's a link to the original. He says data show that using these scores benefit some disadvantaged students, who have a chance … Continue reading David Deming: The Worst Way to Do College Admissions
This post is an essay by Scott Carlson about the high cost of staying competitive at the top of the higher education pyramid, which recently appeared in the Chronicle of Higher Education. Here's a link to the original. Status is everything for universities at the very pinnacle of the highly stratified system of US higher … Continue reading The High Cost of Playing the Status Game in Elite Higher Education
This post is a piece I wrote for Kappan, published in the March 2020 edition. Here’s a link to the PDF. Bureaucracies are often perceived as inflexible, impersonal, hierarchical, and too devoted to rules and red tape. But here I make a case for these characteristics being a positive in the world of public education. U.S. schools are … Continue reading Two Cheers for School Bureaucracy
This post is a piece I wrote for the 1989 book, American Teachers: Histories of a Profession at Work, edited by Don Warren. Here’s a link to a PDF of the original. A slightly different version appeared as a chapter in my 1997 book, How to Succeed in School Without Really Learning. I agreed to write the chapter a … Continue reading Career Ladders and the Early School Teacher: A Story of Inequality and Opportunity
This post is a recent essay by Eric Levitz, which was published in New York Magazine in October. Here's a link to the original. He explores an issue that has been a major concern of mine in recent years, the role that higher education has had in exacerbating political divisions in the US and elsewhere in … Continue reading Eric Levitz — The Diploma Divide
David Labaree on Schooling, History, and Writing 