Coming From Behind: A Historical Perspective on Black Education and Attainment.

In our current reliance on "hard data," achievement test scores are used incorrectly and without warrant as the ultimate mark of educational progress. While it is true that a gap continues to exist, educational history shows that, overall, both Black and White students have participated steadily in increasing numbers in the educational system, whether the measure is the number of students attending school, the increasing length of the school years, literacy rates, or in the actual level of educational attainment over a period of more than 100 years. The data examined in historical perspective show that the American education system, through thick and thin, has served its students well. Those data also show that change comes slowly, in increments of just a few percent a decade. Expectations of rapid change are totally unreasonable when viewed against the historical data. In addition, the historical data show that the Black population has made progress more rapidly over time than the White population. As a result of more rapid progress, although there is still a gap between White and Black, the gap has narrowed considerably. We suggest the gap reflects history and culture. The small increments per decade argue that cultures change slowly and persist over time. We will discuss the history of Black education to suggest some reasons for the gap. The history will help us assess today's achievement gap and help us to understand how far our public education system has brought us.

Follow the money: There's no business like the ed. business...

The debate about charter schools and public schools has been conducted on an ideological level. However, the ideological argument obscures the ongoing transfer of public funds to private use, the creation of business and investment opportunities, and the effects of the private enterprise model on education. In the current two-part article, the authors discuss charter schools and finances. Part 1 concerns charter schools and management organizations. Part 2 focuses on charter schools as business investments. Throughout, the authors link the information to effects on education.

Research in the real world: Social context and its effects.

Although scientists are supposedly concerned only with the pursuit of scientific truth, it was recognized early on that they have personal and professional agendas and are subject to human fallibilities. Openness allowing the scientific community to oversee each member's work depends a great deal upon publication of scientific work. Research reports are cultural artifacts shaped by social forces. In most instances of theoretically oriented work, the roles making up the social context, the researchers, funding agencies, journal editors, publishers, critics, and consumers of research all tend to be scientists sharing common interests and assumptions. There are many actors in addition to scientists in the social context of evaluative research. The actors-sometimes called stakeholders-include people whose lives may change, politicians, government agencies, private foundations, businesspersons, taxpayers, the mass media, and advocates. These actors have varied interests in the research enterprise, are embedded in varied reference groups, and bring different assumptions and values to the task. Their interactions shape the research product at every step. In this genre of research, the contexts are diverse. To illustrate the generality of the influence of social context, the authors draw on three diverse examples spanning a century: the Love Canal industrial disaster of the late 1970s, the ultimately failed attempt in the early 1900s to transplant the Gary, Indiana, progressive school system to New York City (NYC); and some recent studies of charter school students' academic performance.