John White defends the UK private school system from the accusation that it allows an unfair form of 'queue jumping' in university admissions. He offers two responses to this accusation, one based on considerations of harm, and one based on meritocratic distribution of university places. We will argue that neither response succeeds: the…

Based on a review of GPA and SAT/ACT requirements at 221 institutions in 25 states, a new report from the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) recommends that states, institutions of higher education, and the Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP) maintain or establish a higher bar for entry into teacher preparation…

Bellwether Education Partners' report, "A New Agenda," calls for a "rational" and "rigorous" research agenda for teacher education. Although the report's rationale is not fully explicated, it asserts that programs are "blindly swinging from one popular reform to the next" and that decades of input- and…

More and more college admissions offices are inquiring about student applicant's criminal histories and making it nearly impossible for applicants who been convicted of crimes to gain admissions. In Massachusetts, nearly 75% of colleges inquire about criminal histories as a standard part of their student application process, according to…

In almost any conversation about accountability for private schools, accountability for public schools is assumed. This is a dangerous myth. By assuming that the edifice that states and the federal government have created over the past several decades actually holds schools accountable, school choice advocates immediately find themselves in an…

Russell K. Nieli writes in this opinion paper that as far as the ability of state colleges and universities to use race as a criteria for admission goes, "Fisher v. Texas" was a big disappointment, and failed in the most basic way. Nieli states that although some affirmative action opponents have tried to put a more positive spin on the…

This reflection does not pretend to be a scientific survey of curriculum trends but is, as the title suggests, a personal reminiscence of governorship across different phases of education, with snippets about the curriculum that my memory recalls.

A new admissions crisis has begun to emerge in the honors community. In an increasing number of states, legislatures are mandating uniform minimum AP and dual enrollment credits that public colleges and universities must accept, and consequently the honors students that have been admitted based in part on their willingness to take on challenging…

This essay is written in response to Jerry Herron's essay, "Notes toward an Excellent Marxist-Elitist Honors Admissions Policy," which inquired how honors administrators predicted student success and how they used that predictive power wisely and objectively to admit students and maintain quality. The author of this essay, Scott Carnicom…

This is a conversation with Randy Asher, principal of New York City's Brooklyn Technical High School. Brooklyn Tech is a selective science high school in New York City, founded in 1922 as a school for boys with potential for careers in engineering and applied science. Today, it provides full-time education for both male and female students from…

This article is a response to John Silber's article, "Marketing Higher Education: The Survival Value of Integrity." Silber speaks to the very heart of the academy about its integrity and ethics, and does so in timeless fashion through the decades to the current era. In his introduction, he characterizes the "business of education" as inevitable…

It has been a long, litigious road from Heman Sweatt, an African-American mail carrier who wanted to attend the prestigious, all-White law school at the University of Texas at Austin in 1946, to Abigail Fisher, a White high school student who failed to win undergraduate admission to the same university a half-century later. Depending on what the…

David Blunkett's "Review of Education Structures" for the Labour Party recognises that there is a chaotic and unsatisfactory situation in the English education system but its response is ambiguous and self-contradictory. Its proposals seek to normalise and regulate rather than remedy a system in which lack of democratic accountability,…

This article advocates for increased attention on the college admission letter to strengthen conditionally admitted students' academic self-efficacy as they begin the college experience. Although first communications are often considered perfunctory, the language of admission materials has strong potential to help at-risk students begin college…

Annmarie Guzy, an expert with almost three decades of experience in post-secondary honors education, responds to Jerry Herron's essay, "Notes toward an Excellent Marxist-Elitist Honors Admissions Policy," which argues that "a well-conceived admissions policy tells us much more than whom to recruit; it becomes the basis for a…