No Ordinary Success: The Boundaries of School Reform

How much can schools improve the life prospects of children growing up in poor neighborhoods? This question has divided the education community since at least the 1960s, when a group of researchers led by James Coleman attempted to quantify the extent to which segregation hurt black children. Coleman concluded that differences in family background had a greater impact on student achievement than did differences in school quality. Almost 40 years later, former New York Times education columnist Richard Rothstein revisited the question. In a series of lectures at Columbia University’s Teachers College that became the book Class and Schools (2004), Rothstein chronicled the ways in which out-of-school factors undermine low-income children. Poor kids arrive at school knowing fewer words; live in substandard (often lead-poisoned) housing; lack healthcare; spend afternoons, weekends, and summers in neighborhoods without decent parks or libraries; face discrimination in the workplace after they leave school; and so on. This part of Rothstein’s argument was not new to anyone familiar with the lives of poor children. But he made one additional claim that upset many educators. According to Rothstein, the challenges facing low-income students meant that they would always do worse, on average, than their higher-income peers. I devoured Class and Schools when it came out; it seemed an urgent call for our nation to address out-of-school factors holding poor children back. Others saw (and see) Rothstein as defeatist, apologizing for school failure and telling inner-city teachers and kids that they will never beat the odds. The argument erupted again last year when two groups of education reformers set out what were widely seen as competing agendas. The Education Equality Project—led by New York City schools Chancellor Joel Klein, Washington, D.C. schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee, and minister-activist Al Sharpton—emphasized school accountability, tough standards, and changes in how teachers are hired, fired, and paid. The other group, formed by the Economic Policy Institute (Rothstein’s home), called for a “Broader, Bolder Approach,” insisting that schools alone cannot be expected to successfully educate poor students. Schools need help, they said, in the form of expanded health care, afterschool and summer programs, quality early childhood initiatives, and the like. Although the rhetoric from the two camps does not always reflect it, the gap between them is narrowing. Two important new books on schools suggest it should narrow further still

The Rise and Fall of School Vouchers: A Story of Religion, Race, and Politics

This Article examines why school vouchers have failed to garner the support that so many assumed would follow the Court\u27s decision in Zelman. The explanation, I suggest, concerns religion, race, and politics. The original rationale for vouchers was what I call the values claim -vouchers protected the right of parents to send their child to a school that reinforced their values. Originally promoted by Catholics, the values claim was adopted by evangelical Christians concerned about the secularization of public schools after the 1960s. Although the values claim was central for most of the history of the voucher movement, in the decade leading up to Zelman, voucher advocates replaced the values claim with what I call the racial-justice claim. This rationale emphasized vouchers as part of a civil rights struggle to obtain academically rigorous private education for low-income and minority parents. Redefining vouchers in this manner had political and legal advantages, and paved the way for the Court\u27s decision in Zelman upholding vouchers. Since Zelman, however, two trends have emerged that spell trouble for the future of the voucher movement. First, there are tensions between the values and racial-justice claims for vouchers, as the two claims lead to very different types of voucher programs that appeal to divergent political constituencies. Second, the voucher movement has been hurt by the rise of the accountability movement in education. No Child Left Behind was enacted the same year that Zelman was decided, meaning that the Court gave the green light to the voucher movement at exactly the same time that state and national education policy began to demand greater oversight of all schools, including private schools accepting vouchers. For schools today, accountability means less local control, more tests, and stricter government standards. Conservative Christians, who once led the voucher movement, reject these intrusions into school autonomy. As a result, they are less likely to support modern voucher programs. My approach in this Article is historical, predictive, and normative. It is historical in that I trace the development of the values and racial-justice claims for school vouchers, exploring the tensions between the two claims. It is predictive because I suggest that the future of this educational reform is much less rosy than voucher supporters thought when Zelman was decided. Thus, I predict that Zelman may end up mattering much less than so many had thought it would. Finally, my approach is normative for I argue that it would be unfortunate if I am right about the demise of vouchers. While voucher defenders have vastly overstated the racial-justice claim, there is some prospect that vouchers might improve educational outcomes for low-income African American children. I argue that vouchers should be permitted at least until they can be more thoroughly evaluated to determine their impact on a group so in need of better educational opportunities

Do Charter Schools Threaten Public Education? Emerging Evidence from Fifteen Years of a Quasi-Market for Schooling

Supporters of public education have long feared that charter schools will threaten the public system, both by 1) creaming off the most advantaged students and 2) undermining political support for the public system. These fears have not been borne out. Blacks are disproportionately in charters, whites are disproportionately in traditional public schools, and Hispanics are fairly evenly distributed between the two. Looking at class measures, poor students are distributed fairly equally between the two types of schools. And turning to other measures of privilege, the evidence does not point strongly in either direction. My conclusions are not without qualification. The article identifies some domains in which cream-skimming might develop and others where more research is needed. Moreover, the evidence does not support the claims of some charter school advocates that charter schools serve an especially disadvantaged population of students. Regarding the question of public funding, privatization in the education context may have the effect of creating an additional constituency for increased overall education funding. Charter school advocates have moved away from claims that charters will cut costs and instead now focus on securing additional public funding. I argue that the structure of education funding means that charter school efforts to obtain greater public support will likely depend on increasing per pupil spending in all public schools

Financing Peace: International and National Resources for Postconflict Countries and Fragile States

This background paper for the World Bank’s World Development Report 2011 discusses current financing arrangements for postconflict countries and fragile states, with a focus on official development assistance. In recent years a consensus has emerged that in these “difficult environments” the core objective is to build effective and legitimate governance structures that secure public confidence through provision of personal security, equal justice and the rule of law, economic well-being, and essential social services including education and health. Yet tensions persist between business-as-usual development policies on the one hand and policies responsive to the demands of peacebuilding on the other. The preferential allocation of aid to “good performers,” in the name of maximizing its payoff in terms of economic growth, militates against aid to fragile and conflict-affected states. Compelling arguments can be made for assistance to “poor performers” if this can help to prevent conflict and build peace, but the difficulties that prompted donors to become more selective in aid allocation remain all too real. The move to selectivity came in response to evidence that in some contexts aid has perverse effects on economic performance. The same dilemma arises when aid is assessed in terms of its impact on peace and conflict: sometimes aid helps to prevent conflict and build peace, but sometimes it can have the opposite effect. This paper considers how international aid can more effectively help to build resilient states and durable peace.aid; conflict; peacebuilding; statebuilding; fiscal capacity

Response to Crocetti et al.

No abstract available

EXPRESSION AND FUNCTION OF A NONGLYCOSYLATED MAJOR HISTOCOMPATIBILITY CLASS I ANTIGEN

The major histocompatibility class I antigens, expressed in most somatic cells, have carbohydrate moieties. We constructed mutant mouse MHC class I genes in which codons for the N-linked glycosylation sites were replaced by those of other amino acids. L cell transformants expressing the nonglycosylated class I antigens allowed us to investigate biological roles of carbohydrates with the highest specificity possible. The nonglycosylated antigen was unchanged in its overall serological specificities, and was recognized by alloreactive cytotoxic T cells. Further, the antigen was capable of mediating cytotoxic activity of vesicular stomatitis virus-specific T cells. These studies indicate that carbohydrates are not essential for immunological function of the MHC class I antigens. Cell surface expression of the nonglycosylated antigen was markedly reduced as compared with the native antigen, which was not attributable to accelerated degradation or rapid shedding. We conclude that the primary role of carbohydrates of the class I antigens is to facilitate the intracellular transport of the nascent proteins to the plasma membrane. The possible involvement of carbohydrate-receptor interactions in this process is discussed

openWAR: An Open Source System for Evaluating Overall Player Performance in Major League Baseball

Within baseball analytics, there is substantial interest in comprehensive statistics intended to capture overall player performance. One such measure is Wins Above Replacement (WAR), which aggregates the contributions of a player in each facet of the game: hitting, pitching, baserunning, and fielding. However, current versions of WAR depend upon proprietary data, ad hoc methodology, and opaque calculations. We propose a competitive aggregate measure, openWAR, that is based upon public data and methodology with greater rigor and transparency. We discuss a principled standard for the nebulous concept of a "replacement" player. Finally, we use simulation-based techniques to provide interval estimates for our openWAR measure.Comment: 27 pages including supplemen

Loop corrections for Kaluza-Klein AdS amplitudes

Recently we conjectured the four-point amplitude of graviton multiplets in ${\rm AdS}_5 \times {\rm S}^5$ at one loop by exploiting the operator product expansion of $\mathcal{N}=4$ super Yang-Mills theory. Here we give the first extension of those results to include Kaluza-Klein modes, obtaining the amplitude for two graviton multiplets and two states of the first KK mode. Our method again relies on resolving the large N degeneracy among a family of long double-trace operators, for which we obtain explicit formulas for the leading anomalous dimensions. Having constructed the one-loop amplitude we are able to obtain a formula for the one-loop corrections to the anomalous dimensions of all twist five double-trace operators.Comment: 37 pages. One ancillary file containing data on the correlator