Hugging the Middle

In the last quarter-century and especially the last decade, testing and accountability have come to dominate education policy at the state and national levels. The common concern about the effects of such testing is that it reshapes teaching in the classroom. But such claims do not look at the evidence of deeper classroom structures (the mix of teacher-centered and student-centered practices) in historical context. This article extends historical research in How Teachers Taught (Cuban, 1993) to the present in three metropolitan school districts. While testing and accountability have become more obvious concerns of teachers, the hybridized classroom environment documented in How Teachers Taught have become more pervasive. This article documents this continuing ubiquity and addresses the apparent inconsistency between evidence of a hybridized classroom environment and the unintended consequences of testing and accountability

Making Public Schools Business-Like… Again

A contracting firm in New York City employed 4,900 skilled mechanics direct from Europe, paying them fifty cents per day above the union rate, because it was impossible to secure such valuable workmen in our greatest industrial center

Virtual Schools in the U.S. 2013: Politics, Performance, Policy, and Research Evidence

This national study, which comprehensively reviews 311 virtual schools operating in the United States, finds serious and systemic problems with the nation’s full-time cyber schools. Despite virtual schools’ track record of students falling behind their peers academically or dropping-out at higher rates, states and districts continue to expand virtual schools and online offerings to students, at high cost to taxpayers. The advocates of full-time virtual schools are several years ahead of policymakers and researchers, and new opportunities are being developed and promoted largely by for-profit entities accountable to stockholders rather than to any public constituency. The report’s authors conclude that continued rapid expansion of full-time cyber schools is unwise. More research is needed; and to enable such research, state oversight agencies need to require more, and better refined, data. Financial controls and funding unique to cyber schools need to be established

The Effects of Home Computers on Educational Outcomes: Evidence from a Field Experiment with Schoolchildren

Are home computers are an important input in the educational production function? To address this question, we conduct a field experiment involving the provision of free computers to schoolchildren for home use. Low-income children attending middle and high schools in 15 schools in California were randomly selected to receive free computers and followed over the school year. The results indicate that the experiment substantially increased computer ownership and total computer use among the schoolchildren with no substitution away from use at school or other locations outside the home. We find no evidence that the home computers improved educational outcomes for the treatment group. From detailed administrative data provided by the schools and a follow-up survey, we find no evidence of positive effects on a comprehensive set of outcomes such as grades, test scores, credits, attendance, school enrollment, computer skills, and college aspirations. The estimates also do not indicate that the effects of home computers on educational outcomes are instead negative. Our estimates are precise enough to rule out even modestly-sized positive or negative impacts. The lack of a positive net effect on educational outcomes may be due to displacement from non-educational uses such as for games, social networking, and entertainment. We find evidence that total hours of computer use for games and social networking increases substantially with having a home computer, and increases more than total hours of computer use for schoolwork

Motivación y estimación del tiempo en el uso de herramientas internet informacionales y dialógicas

Se analiza la relación existente entre el grado de interés o motivación y estimación del tiempo (aspectos psicológicos) en la realización de tareas informacionales y dialógicas (aspectos comunicacionales) mediadas por internet en adolescentes chilenos. Se empleó una muestra estratificada de 120 estudiantes de 7 liceos de Chile con una media de edad de 15 años. Todos los participantes debían realizar de forma sucesiva dos tareas por internet: una primera tarea de comunicación vertical (búsqueda de información con el empleo del Google) y una segunda tarea de comunicación horizontal (diálogo por mensajería). Para cada una de las tareas se medía el tiempo percibido y el grado de interés. Los resultados muestran un interés significativamente mayor y un tiempo estimado significativamente menor en la tarea de comunicación horizontal. Desde aquí se pueden proyectar usos informacionales y educativos de interne

The integration of sciences into the American secondary school curriculum, 1890s-1990s

School reforms in the late 19th century, mirroring larger social, economic, and political changes in American society, account for the permanent lodging of science into the high school curriculum. Major changes in science courses, texts, and instruction occurred in these years. These changes then and since, however, were marked by ideological struggles among groups of reformers representing university academics, policy makers, and educators over why science should be taught and how best to teach the subject. Those struggles over the purposes of science knowledge (should science be taught for its knowledge or its utility in society?) and pedagogy (traditional or progressive methods) reflected deeply embedded value conflicts in American democracy and over the purposes of the high school in such a society. (DIPF/orig.

Cuban, Larry, Managing Dilemmas While Building Professional Communities, Educational Researcher, 21(January-February, 1992), 4-11.*

Makes the case for dilemma / value-oriented inquiry in education

Enseñanza y aprendizaje en la universidad investigadora

Larry Cuban es uno de los más distinguidoshistoriadores de la educación,que ha hecho una larga y variadacarrera como profesor de estudios sociales,administración de la escuela pública y profesoruniversitario. Profundamente atento a los retosdiarios de la vida en la escuela, su investigaciónexplora tanto las esperanzas como los límitesprácticos de la reforma educativa, tal como losugieren los títulos de sus obras: How TeachersTaught: Constancy and Change in AmericanClassrooms, 1980-1990 (1993) and (withDavid Tyack) Tinkering Toward Utopia: A Centuryof Public Scool Reform (1955). In hislatest book, How Scholars Trumped Teachers:Change Without Reform in University Curriculum,Teaching, and Research, 1980-1990(Teachers College Press, 1999). El profesorCuban investigó todo un siglo de esfuerzos paramejorar la enseñanza y el aprendizaje en launiversidad investigadora de Norteamérica