Harvard University Press - EDUCATION

The Best of the Best

Sat, 30 Jan 2010 00:00:00 EST

Rubén A. Gaztambide-Fernández
For two years, Rubén Gaztambide-Fernández shared the life of what he calls the “Weston School,” an elite New England boarding school. Vividly describing the pastoral landscape and graceful buildings, the rich variety of classes and activities, and the official and unofficial rules that define the school, The Best of the Best reveals a small world of deeply ambitious, intensely pressured students. For Gaztambide-Fernández, Weston is daunting yet strikingly bucolic, inspiring but frustratingly incurious, and sometimes—especially for young women—a gilded cage for a gilded age.
January 2010

The Ordeal of Equality

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 00:00:00 EDT

David K. Cohen
Susan L. Moffitt
American schools have always been locally created and controlled. But ever since the Title I program in 1965 appropriated nearly one billion dollars for public schools, federal money and programs have been influencing every school in America. With incisive clarity and wit, David Cohen and Susan Moffitt argue that enormous gaps existed between policies and programs, and the real-world practices that they attempted to change.
Hardcover October 2009

Artscience

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:00:00 EDT

David Edwards
This book is an attempt to show how innovation in the "post-Google generation" is often catalyzed by those who cross a conventional line so firmly drawn between the arts and the sciences. Edwards describes how contemporary creators achieve breakthroughs in the arts and sciences by developing their ideas in an intermediate zone of human creativity where neither art nor science is easily defined.
Paperback October 2009

The College Fear Factor

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Rebecca D. Cox
Rebecca D. Cox draws on five years of interviews and observations at community colleges, where she shows how students and their instructors misunderstand and ultimately fail one another, despite good intentions. Eye-opening even for experienced faculty and administrators, The College Fear Factor reveals how the traditional college culture can actually pose obstacles to students’ success, and suggests strategies for effectively explaining academic expectations.
Hardcover October 2009

The Race between Education and Technology

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Claudia Goldin
Lawrence F. Katz
This book provides a careful historical analysis of the co-evolution of educational attainment and the wage structure in the United States through the twentieth century. During the first eight decades of the twentieth century, the increase of educated workers was higher than the demand for them. This boosted income for most people and lowered inequality. However, the reverse has been true since about 1980. The authors discuss the complex reasons for this educational slow-down and what might be done to ameliorate it.
Paperback October 2009

The Trials of Academe

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Amy Gajda
Once upon a time, virtually no one in the academy thought to sue over campus disputes, and, if they dared, judges bounced the case on grounds that it was no business of the courts. Not so today. As Amy Gajda shows in this witty yet troubling book, litigation is now common on campus, and perhaps even more commonly feared. This book explores the origins and causes of the litigation trend, its implications for academic freedom, and what lawyers, judges, and academics themselves can do to limit the potential damage.
Hardcover October 2009

The Best of the Best

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Creating a Class

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Mitchell L. Stevens
In real life, Stevens is a professor at Stanford University. But for a year and a half, he worked in the admissions office of a bucolic New England college known for its high academic standards, beautiful campus, and social conscience. Ambitious high schoolers and savvy guidance counselors know that admission here is highly competitive. But creating classes, Stevens finds, is a lot more complicated than most people imagine.
Paperback September 2009

The Gates Unbarred

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Michael Shinagel
The Gates Unbarred traces the evolution of University Extension at Harvard from the Lyceum movement in Boston to its creation by the newly appointed president A. Lawrence Lowell in 1910. For a century University Extension has provided community access to Harvard, including the opportunity for women and men to earn a degree.
Hardcover September 2009

Measuring Up

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Daniel Koretz
Measuring Up demystifies educational testing—from MCAS to SAT to WAIS. Bringing statistical terms down to earth, Koretz takes readers through the most fundamental issues that arise in educational testing and shows how they apply to some of the most controversial issues in education today, from high-stakes testing to special education.
Paperback September 2009

Teaching What You Don’t Know

Mon, 31 Aug 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Therese Huston
Your graduate work was on bacterial evolution, but now you're lecturing to 200 freshmen on primate social life. In this practical and funny book, an experienced teaching consultant offers many creative strategies for dealing with typical problems. Original, useful, and hopeful, this book reminds you that teaching what you don't know, to students whom you may not understand, is not just a job. It's an adventure.
Hardcover / August 2009

The Program Era

Sun, 30 Aug 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Mark McGurl
In The Program Era, Mark McGurl offers a fundamental reinterpretation of postwar American fiction, asserting that it can be properly understood only in relation to the rise of mass higher education and the creative writing program. An engaging and stylishly written examination of an era we thought we knew, The Program Era will be at the center of debates about postwar literature and culture for years to come.
August 2009

How Professors Think

Fri, 31 Jul 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Michèle Lamont
Everyone in academia stresses quality. But what exactly is it, and how do professors identify it? Michèle Lamont observed deliberations for fellowships and research grants, and interviewed panel members at length. In How Professors Think, she reveals what she discovered about this secretive, powerful, peculiar world. Lamont aims to illuminate the confidential process of evaluation and to push the gatekeepers to both better understand and perform their role.
July 2009

The Golden Age of the Classics in America

Thu, 23 Jul 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Carl J. Richard
In a masterful study Carl Richard explores how the Greek and Roman classics became enshrined in American antebellum culture. For the first time, knowledge of the classics extended beyond aristocratic males to the middle class, women, African Americans, and frontier settlers. The Civil War led to a radical alteration of the educational system in a way that steadily eroded the preeminence of the classics.
July 2009

The Ambiguity of Play

Wed, 1 Jul 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Brian Sutton-Smith
Every child knows what it means to play, but the rest of us must merely speculate. Is it a kind of adaptation which teaches us skills and inducts us into certain communities? Is it power, pursued in games of prowess, or fate, deployed in games of chance, or daydreaming, enacted in art? Brian Sutton-Smith, a leading proponent of play theory, considers each possibility as it has been proposed, elaborated, and debated in disciplines ranging from biology, psychology, and education to metaphysics, mathematics, and sociology.
July 2009

Beyond the Ivory Tower

Wed, 1 Jul 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Derek Bok
Derek Bok examines the complex ethical and social issues facing modern universities today, and suggests approaches that will allow the academic institution both to serve society and to continue its primary mission of teaching and research.
July 2009

The Blackboard and the Bottom Line

Wed, 1 Jul 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Larry Cuban
In this provocative new book, Cuban takes aim at the alluring cliché that schools should be more businesslike, and shows that in its long history in business-minded America, no one has shown that a business model can be successfully applied to education.
July 2009

The Boy Who Would Be a Helicopter

Wed, 1 Jul 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Vivian Gussin Paley
The Boy Who Would Be a Helicopter focuses on the challenge posed by the isolated child to teachers and classmates alike in the unique community of the classroom. It is the dramatic story of Jason--the loner and outsider--and of his ultimate triumph and homecoming into the society of his classmates. As we follow Jason's struggle, we see that the classroom is indeed the crucible within which the young discover themselves and learn to confront new problems in their daily experience.
July 2009

By Design

Wed, 1 Jul 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Richard J. Light
Judith D. Singer
John B. Willett
Do students who work longer and harder learn more in college? Does joining a fraternity with a more academic flavor enhance a student's academic performance? These are just some more than fifty examples that Richard Light Judith Singer and John Willett explore in By Design, a lively nontechnical sourcebook for learning about colleges and universities.
July 2009

Catholic Schools and the Common Good

Wed, 1 Jul 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Anthony Bryk
Valerie Lee
Peter Holland
The authors examined a broad range of Catholic schools and found that these schools have an independent effect on achievement, especially in reducing disparities between disadvantaged and privileged students. The Catholic school of today, they show, is informed by a vision, similar to that of John Dewey, of the school as a community committed to democratic education and the common good of all students.
July 2009

Children Solving Problems

Wed, 1 Jul 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Stephanie Thornton
Stephanie Thornton surveys recent research from a broad range of perspectives in order to explore why successful problem-solving depends less on how smart we are--or, as the pioneering psychologist Jean Piaget claimed, how advanced is our skill in logical reasoning--and more on the factual knowledge we acquire as we learn and interpret cues from the world around us.
July 2009

Children as Pawns

Wed, 1 Jul 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Timothy A. Hacsi
Head Start. Bilingual education. Small class size. Social promotion. School funding. Virtually every school system in America has had to face these issues over the past thirty years. In the first book to bring together the recent history of educational policy and politics with the research evidence, Timothy Hacsi presents the illuminating, often-forgotten stories of these five controversial topics. He sifts through the complicated evaluation research literature and compares the policies that have been adopted to the best evidence about what actually works.
July 2009

Children of Immigration

Wed, 1 Jul 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Carola Suárez-Orozco
Marcelo M. Suárez-Orozco
In the midst of the largest immigration wave in history, America is once again contemplating a future in which new arrivals will play a crucial role in reworking the fabric of the nation. This book, written by the codirectors of the largest ongoing longitudinal study of immigrant children and their families, offers a clear, broad, interdisciplinary view of who the immigrant children are and what their future might hold.
July 2009

Creating a Class

Wed, 1 Jul 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Diversity and Distrust

Wed, 1 Jul 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Stephen Macedo
Stephen Macedo believes that, when it comes to education policy in the United States and other culturally diverse democracies, diversity should often, but not always, be highly valued. We must remember, he insists, that many forms of social and religious diversity are at odds with basic commitments to liberty, equality, and civic flourishing. Extending the ideas of John Rawls, he defends a "civic liberalism" that supports the legitimacy of reasonable efforts to inculcate shared political virtues while leaving many larger questions of meaning and value to private communities.
July 2009

The Early Admissions Game

Wed, 1 Jul 2009 00:00:00 EDT

with a new chapter
Christopher Avery
Andrew Fairbanks
Richard Zeckhauser
Based on the careful examination of more than 500,000 applications to fourteen elite colleges and hundreds of interviews with students, counselors, and admissions officers, this book details the advantages and pitfalls of applying early as it provides a map for students and parents to navigate the process.
July 2009

The Education Gospel

Wed, 1 Jul 2009 00:00:00 EDT

W. Norton Grubb
Marvin Lazerson
In this hard-hitting history of "the gospel of education," W. Norton Grubb and Marvin Lazerson reveal the allure, and the fallacy, of the longstanding American faith that more schooling for more people is the remedy for all our social and economic problems--and that the central purpose of education is workplace preparation.
July 2009

Education for Thinking

Wed, 1 Jul 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Deanna Kuhn
Bringing insights from research in developmental psychology to pedagogy, Kuhn argues that inquiry and argument should be at the center of a "thinking curriculum"--a curriculum that makes sense to students as well as to teachers and develops the skills and values needed for lifelong learning.
July 2009

The Girl with the Brown Crayon

Wed, 1 Jul 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Vivian Gussin Paley
As she enters her final year of teaching, Vivian Paley tells in this book a story of her own farewell, as well as a story of the self-discovery of Reeny, a little girl with a fondness for the color brown. Led by Reeny, Paley and the children develop a passion for the books of Italian author Leo Lionni, and reinvent their classroom around discussions of these stories. Through Frederick the mouse and Lionni's other characters they explore themes of race, identity, gender, and the essential human needs to create and to belong.
July 2009

Harvard A to Z

Wed, 1 Jul 2009 00:00:00 EDT

John T. Bethell
Richard M. Hunt
Robert Shenton
An alphabetical compendium of short but substantial essays about Harvard University--its undergraduate college and nine professional schools--this volume traverses the gamut of Harvardiana from Aab and Admissions to X Cage and Z Closet.
July 2009

In Mrs. Tully's Room

Wed, 1 Jul 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Vivian Gussin Paley
In Mrs. Tully's Room tells the story of the comforting and compelling community created by the center's gifted director. This book offers hope to parents and practical guidelines for daycare providers on how to use their imaginations, and those of their charges, to enrich the children's minds and hearts.
July 2009

Increasing Faculty Diversity

Wed, 1 Jul 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Stephen Cole
Elinor Barber
In recent years, colleges have successfully increased the racial diversity of their student bodies. They have been less successful, however, in diversifying their faculties. This book identifies the ways in which minority students make occupational choices, what their attitudes are toward a career in academia, and why so few become college professors.
July 2009

Innocents Abroad

Wed, 1 Jul 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Jonathan Zimmerman
Until the early twentieth century, teachers went abroad with assumptions of their own superiority. But by the mid-twentieth century, they became far more self-questioning about their social assumptions, their educational theories, and the complexity of their role in a foreign society. Drawing on extensive archives of teachers' letters and accounts, Zimmerman's narrative explores the teachers' shifting attitudes about their country and themselves, in a world that was more unexpected than they could have imagined.
July 2009

Inside Charter Schools

Wed, 1 Jul 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Edited by Bruce Fuller
Deepening disaffection with conventional public schools has inspired flight to private schools, home schooling, and new alternatives, such as charter schools. Barely a decade old, the charter school movement has attracted a colorful band of supporters, from presidential candidates, to ethnic activists, to the religious Right. Inside Charter Schools provides shrewd and illuminating studies of the struggles and achievements of these new schools, and offers practical lessons for educators, scholars, policymakers, and parents.
July 2009

Inside Teaching

Wed, 1 Jul 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Mary Kennedy
Arguing that too many would-be reformers know nothing about the conflicting demands of teaching, Kennedy takes us into the controlled commotion of the classroom, revealing how painstakingly teachers plan their lessons, and how many different ways things go awry. She argues that pedagogical reform proposals that do not acknowledge all of the things teachers need to do are bound to fail. If reformers want students to learn, they must address all of the problems teachers face, not just those that interest them.
July 2009

Investing in College

Wed, 1 Jul 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Malcolm Getz
College education is one of the most important investments a family will make, but the process can be a headache for students and their parents. In a unique approach to this issue, economist and teacher Getz walks readers through the opportunities, risks, and rewards of heading off to college, breaking down confusing admissions and financial options.
July 2009

Judging School Discipline

Wed, 1 Jul 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Richard Arum
Judging School Discipline is a powerfully reasoned account of how decades of mostly well-intended litigation have eroded the moral authority of teachers and principals and degraded the quality of American education. In a rigorous analysis enriched by vivid descriptions of individual cases, the book explores 1,200 cases in which a school's right to control students was contested.
July 2009

The Kindness of Children

Wed, 1 Jul 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Vivian Gussin Paley
Visiting a London nursery school, Vivian Paleyobserves the schoolchildren's reception of another visitor, a handicapped boy named Teddy. A predicament arises, and the children's response offers Paley the purest evidence of kindness she has ever seen. In subsequent encounters, "the Teddy story" draws forth other tales of impulsive goodness from Paley's listeners, and resonates through this book as one story leads to another, illuminating the moral meanings that children may be learning to create among themselves.
July 2009

Kwanzaa and Me

Wed, 1 Jul 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Vivian Gussin Paley
In her latest book, Vivian Paley sets out to discover the truth about the multicultural classroom from those who participate in it. Here are the voices of black teachers and minority parents, immigrant families, a Native American educator, and the children themselves, whose stories mingle with the author's to create a candid picture of the successes and failures of the integrated classroom.
July 2009

Learning a New Land

Wed, 1 Jul 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Carola Suárez-Orozco
Marcelo M. Suárez-Orozco
Irina Todorova
One child in five in America is the child of immigrants, and their numbers increase each year. Based on an extraordinary interdisciplinary study that followed 400 newly arrived children from the Caribbean, China, Central America, and Mexico for five years, this book provides a compelling account of the lives, dreams, academic journeys, and frustrations of these youngest immigrants.
July 2009

Measuring Up

Wed, 1 Jul 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Oversold and Underused

Wed, 1 Jul 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Larry Cuban
In Oversold and Underused, one of the most respected voices in American education argues that when teachers are not given a say in how the technology might reshape schools, computers are merely souped-up typewriters and classrooms continue to run much as they did a generation ago. In his studies of early childhood, high school, and university classrooms in Silicon Valley, Larry Cuban found that students and teachers use the new technologies far less in the classroom than they do at home, and that teachers who use computers for instruction do so infrequently and unimaginatively.
July 2009

Politics, Persuasion, and Educational Testing

Wed, 1 Jul 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Lorraine M. McDonnell
Exploring the political struggles inspired by mass educational tests, McDonnell analyzes the design and implementation of statewide testing in California, Kentucky, and North Carolina in the 1990s. McDonnell draws lessons from these stories for the federal No Child Left Behind act, with its sweeping directives for high-stakes testing. To read this book is to witness the unfolding drama of America's educational culture wars, and to see hope for their resolution.
July 2009

Print Literacy Development

Wed, 1 Jul 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Victoria Purcell-Gates
Erik Jacobson
Sophie Degener
Is literacy a social and cultural practice, or a set of cognitive skills to be learned and applied? Literacy researchers, who have differed sharply on this question, will welcome this book, which is the first to address the critical divide. The authors lucidly explain how we develop our abilities to read and write and offer a unified theory of literacy development that places cognitive development within a sociocultural context of literacy practices.
July 2009

The Process of Education, Revised Edition

Wed, 1 Jul 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Jerome Bruner
Jerome Bruner shows that the basic concepts of science and the humanities can be grasped intuitively at a very early age. Bruner's foundational case for the spiral curriculum has influenced a generation of educators and will continue to be a source of insight into the goals and methods of the educational process.
July 2009

The Questions of Tenure

Wed, 1 Jul 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Edited by Richard P. Chait
Tenure is the abortion issue of the academy, igniting arguments and inflaming near-religious passions. But beyond anecdote and opinion, what do we really know about how it works? Chait and his colleagues offer the results of their research on key empirical questions and conclude that no single tenure system exists. Still, since no academic reward carries the cachet of tenure, few institutions will initiate significant changes without either powerful external pressures or persistent demands from new or disgruntled faculty.
July 2009

The Race between Education and Technology

Wed, 1 Jul 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Reaching Higher

Wed, 1 Jul 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Rhona S. Weinstein
Drawing upon a generation of research on self-fulfilling prophecies in education, Reaching Higher argues that our expectations of children are often too low. Weinstein shows that children typed early as "not very smart" can go on to accomplish far more than is expected of them by an educational system with too narrow a definition of ability. She faults the system, pointing out that teachers themselves are harnessed by policies that do not enable them to reach higher for all children.
July 2009

The Reading Crisis

Wed, 1 Jul 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Jeanne S. Chall
Vicki A. Jacobs
Luke E. Baldwin
How severe is the literacy gap in our schools? In The Reading Crisis, the renowned reading specialist Jeanne Chall and her colleagues examine the causes of this disparity and suggest some remedies.
July 2009

Reconstructing American Education

Wed, 1 Jul 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Michael B. Katz
July 2009

The Sandbox Investment

Wed, 1 Jul 2009 00:00:00 EDT

David L. Kirp
The rich have always valued early education, and for the past forty years, millions of poorer kids have had Head Start. Now, more and more middle class parents have realized that a good preschool is the smartest investment they can make in their children's future in a competitive world. Writing with the verve of a magazine journalist and the authority of a scholar, Kirp makes the ideal guide to this quiet movement and campaign.
July 2009

The Schoolhome

Wed, 1 Jul 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Jane Martin
Drawing selectively from reform movements of the past and relating them to the unique needs of today's parents and children, Jane Martin presents a philosophy of education that is responsive to America's changed and changing realities.
July 2009

Shakespeare, Einstein, and the Bottom Line

Wed, 1 Jul 2009 00:00:00 EDT

David L. Kirp
Wry and insightful, Shakespeare, Einstein, and the Bottom Line takes us on a cross-country tour of the most powerful trend in academic life today--the rise of business values and the belief that efficiency, immediate practical usefulness, and marketplace triumph are the best measures of a university's success.
July 2009

Standards Deviation

Wed, 1 Jul 2009 00:00:00 EDT

James P. Spillane
After intensively studying several school districts' responses to new statewide science and math teaching policies, Spillane argues that administrators and teachers are inclined to assimilate new policies into current practices. As new programs are communicated through administrative levels, the understanding of them becomes increasingly distorted, no matter how sincerely the new ideas are endorsed. Such patterns highlight the need for systematic training and continuing support for those entrusted with carrying out large-scale educational change.
July 2009

Summing Up

Wed, 1 Jul 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Richard J. Light
David B. Pillemer
How can a scientist or policy analyst summarize and evaluate what is already known about a particular topic? This book offers practical guidance.
July 2009

Teaching Sex

Wed, 1 Jul 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Jeffrey P. Moran
Teaching Sex travels back over the past century to trace the emergence of the "sexual adolescent" in America and the evolution of the schools' efforts to teach sex to this captive pupil. Jeffrey Moran takes us on a fascinating ride through America's sexual mores. We see how the political and moral anxieties of each era found their way into sex education curricula, reflecting the priorities of the elders more than the concerns of the young.
July 2009

Teaching in America

Wed, 1 Jul 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Gerald Grant
Christine E. Murray
Would America's schools be better served if teachers shared more of the authority that professors have long enjoyed? Will a slow revolution be completed that enables schoolteachers to shoulder more responsibility for hiring, mentoring, promoting, and, if necessary, firing their peers? This book explores these questions and describes the evolution of the teaching profession over the last hundred years.The authors conclude by analyzing three equally possible scenarios depicting the role of teachers in 2020.
July 2009

Tinkering toward Utopia

Wed, 1 Jul 2009 00:00:00 EDT

David Tyack
Larry Cuban
Tinkering toward Utopia documents the dynamic tension between Americans' faith in education as a panacea and the moderate pace of change in educational practices. David Tyack and Larry Cuban suggest that reformers today need to focus on ways to help teachers improve instruction from the inside out instead of decreeing change by remote control, and also to keep in mind the democratic purposes that guide public education.
July 2009

Tuition Rising

Wed, 1 Jul 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Ronald G. Ehrenberg
America's elite colleges and universities are the best in the world. They are also the most expensive, with tuition rising faster than the rate of inflation over the past thirty years and no indication that this trend will abate. Ronald G. Ehrenberg explores the causes of this tuition inflation, drawing on his many years as a teacher and researcher of the economics of higher education and as a senior administrator at Cornell University.
July 2009

Wally’s Stories

Wed, 1 Jul 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Vivian Gussin Paley
Wally's Stories is Vivian Paley's lively account of her kindergarten classroom, a classroom where children are encouraged to learn by using their fantasies and stories. The book describes the evolution of both teacher and students as they grow to understand each other through this unusual teaching method. The author shows that in the course of creating their own dramatic world, five-year-olds are capable of thought and language far in advance of what they accomplish in traditional classroom exercises.
July 2009

White Teacher

Wed, 1 Jul 2009 00:00:00 EDT

With a New Preface
Vivian Gussin Paley
Vivian Paley presents a moving personal account of her experiences teaching kindergarten in an integrated school within a predominantly white, middle-class neighborhood. In a new preface, she reflects on the way that even simple terminology can convey unintended meanings and show a speaker's blind spots. She also vividly describes what her readers have taught her over the years about herself as a "white teacher."
July 2009

Who Controls Teachers' Work?

Wed, 1 Jul 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Richard M. Ingersoll
Drawing on large national surveys as well as wide-ranging interviews with high school teachers and administrators, Ingersoll reveals the shortcomings in the two opposing viewpoints that dominate thought on this subject: that schools are too decentralized and lack adequate control and accountability; and that schools are too centralized, giving teachers too little autonomy.
July 2009

Who Owns Academic Work?

Wed, 1 Jul 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Corynne McSherry
Drawing on legal, historical, and qualitative research, Corynne McSherry explores the propertization of academic work and shows how that process is shaking the foundations of the university, the professoriate, and intellectual property law. The rush of universities and scholars to defend their knowledge as property dangerously undercuts a working covenant that has sustained academic life--and intellectual property law--for a century and a half. As the value structure of the research university is replaced by the inequalities of the free market, academics risk losing a language for talking about knowledge as anything other than property.
July 2009

Who Will Teach?

Wed, 1 Jul 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Richard Murnane
Judith D. Singer
John B. Willett
James Kemple
Randall Olsen
July 2009

Whose America?

Wed, 1 Jul 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Jonathan Zimmerman
As a result of years of urging from various ethnic groups, textbooks and curricula now offer an inclusive account of American progress in freedom and justice. However, moral and religious education remain on much thornier ground. In this absorbing book, Jonathan Zimmerman tells the dramatic story of compromise and conflict over the teaching of history and morality in twentieth-century America.
July 2009

Working and Growing Up in America

Wed, 1 Jul 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Jeylan T. Mortimer
Should teenagers have jobs while they're in high school? Doesn't working distract them from schoolwork, cause long-term problem behaviors, and precipitate a "precocious" transition to adulthood? This report from a remarkable longitudinal study of 1,000 students, followed from the beginning of high school through their mid-twenties, answers, resoundingly, no.
July 2009

You Can't Say You Can't Play

Wed, 1 Jul 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Vivian Gussin Paley
In this book, Vivian Paley employs a unique strategy to probe the moral dimensions of the classroom. She departs from her previous work by extending her analysis to children through the fifth grade, all the while weaving remarkable faiy tale into her narrative description. Vivian Paley introduces a new rule--"You can't say you can't play"--to her kindergarten students and solicits the opinions of older children regarding the fairness of such a rule. We hear from those who are rejected as well as from those who do the rejecting.The struggle that ensues presents a great teacher with her greatest challenge and speaks to some of our most deeply held beliefs.
July 2009

The Sandbox Investment

Sun, 31 May 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Hope and Despair in the American City

Sat, 30 May 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Gerald Grant
In Hope and Despair, Gerald Grant compares two cities—his hometown of Syracuse, New York, and Raleigh, North Carolina—in order to examine the consequences of the nation’s ongoing educational inequities. The result is an ambitious portrait—sometimes disturbing, often inspiring—of two cities that exemplify our nation’s greatest educational challenges, as well as a passionate exploration of the potential for school reform that exists for our urban schools today.
Hardcover / May 2009

The Program Era

Thu, 30 Apr 2009 00:00:00 EDT

How Professors Think

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 00:00:00 EDT

The Golden Age of the Classics in America

Mon, 23 Mar 2009 00:00:00 EDT