The current preoccupation in the United States with test-based accountability is founded on a set of faulty assumptions--about education practices elsewhere in the world, about international test score comparisons, and about the extent to which test scores are valid indicators of the quality of education or the state of the economy. For example,…

This document is comprised of the 6 issues in volume 18 of the Harvard Education Letter, a bimonthly newsletter addressing current issues in elementary and secondary education. Articles in this volume include the following: (1) January/February--"Curriculum Access in the Digital Age" (David T. Gordon) and "Using Charters To Improve…

The divergence between a predominately White teacher education population and a diverse public school system poses this question: how do universities best prepare teacher candidates to teach children of racially and linguistically different backgrounds than their own? Teacher education programs have addressed this issue in a variety of ways, such…