NEPC Review: Reform With Results for New Jersey Schools

A report published by the Lexington Institute presents findings on the effectiveness of New Jersey&rsquo;s Abbott v. Burke court decisions from the late 1990s through 2009. The report argues that the reforms ordered by the state&rsquo;s supreme court failed to significantly increase student achievement despite what it terms as dramatic increases in spending. Based on these findings, the report argues that the increases in spending in these urban districts and their continued dismal student achievement rates make New Jersey, and particularly Newark, ideal for instituting a number of reforms. These advocated reforms include parental empowerment, increases in the number of charter schools, changes in teacher union contracts, and the enactment of private school choice policies (e.g., vouchers). The report cannot stand as a research document and provides little or no empirical evidence to support its critiques of Abbott or its recommendations for reform. It omits important parts of the existing research literature, such as NAEP data showing New Jersey as high performing and as closing the achievement gap. The Lexington report contains no methodology to speak of. Overall, the report has little or no use for informing educational reform in Newark, New Jersey or nationally.</p

Progressive Education: Lesson from the Past and Present

Progressive education is one of the most enduring educational reform movements in this country, with a lifespan of over one hundred years. Although as noted earlier, it waxes and wanes in popularity, many of its practices now appear so regularly in both private and public schools as to have become almost mainstream. But from the schools that were the pioneers, what useful lessons can we learn? The histories of the early progressive schools profiled in Part 1 illustrate what happened to some of the progressive schools founded in the first part of the twentieth century. But even now, they serve as important reminders for educators concerned with the competing issues of stability and change in schools with particular progressive philosophies—reminders, specifically, of the complex nature of school reform

Semel, Susan F., and Alan R. Sadovnik, The Contemporary Small-School Movement: Lessons from the History of Progressive Education, Teachers College Record, 110(September, 2008), 1744-1771.

Examines similarities and differences between Central Park East Secondary School in New York City and earlier progressive schools such as the Dalton School and the City and Country School

Sociology of education : a critical reader

xvii, 502 p. : ill. ; 26 cm

"Schools of tomorrow," schools of today : what happened to progressive education /

Includes bibliographical references (p. [377]-430) and index.Vanobbergen, Brun