Contributor
Sherman Dorn, Professor, University of South Florida
Related Link:
http://www.shermandorn.com/
Biography provided by participant
Sherman Dorn is an historian of education who has written about the last 50 years of education policy, including high school graduation, special education, and high-stakes accountability.
Recent Responses
November 2, 2009 07:52 AM
Andy Smarick is partly correct. While he does not cite the work of Heinrich Mintrop, both reach the same conclusion: the practice of sanctioning schools has provided little concrete benefit. The lesson that Smarick draws is that we should simply shut those schools down and replace them with new schools. The problem is that there is no research that such an approach will work any more frequently than reorganizations and turnaround initiatives. There is little evidence that Chicago's close-and-reopen strategy is a game-changer, and the evidence on charter schools is mixed over the same period of time that Smarick identifies…
Read moreOctober 16, 2009 01:40 PM
The purpose of the i3 Fund awards is not accountability but innovation, and restricting eligibility to those who had met AYP for 2 years would tell everyone who hadn’t met that hurdle, “Just give up on improving through innovation and getting support for that. We’re not even going to look at what you propose.” Maybe I am looking at this in a simplistic way, but I think a basic effect size measure would be more practical than what Steve Peha proposes, largely because you do not want to make model assumptions about the relative difficulty of assessments when the…
Read moreSeptember 21, 2009 12:12 PM
Since the early 1960s, Americans have used the label “dropout” to capture concerns about the students who do not graduate from high school. As I have described in my research, the solutions proposed have too often focused on the presumed psychological problems and family deficits of dropouts. Michelle Fine, Melissa Roderick, Russell Rumberger, and others have documented how such stereotypes bely a complex path students lead through and out of school. Moreover, most dropout prevention and remediation efforts have typically lived on the margins of school systems, and after temporary funding from grants or a budget line-item disappeared, so…
Read moreSeptember 14, 2009 09:16 AM
Mr. Merisotis wrote at the 20,000-foot level. I’m at the ground level, teaching undergraduates in a four-year public institution, and here is what would help my students and their classmates graduate: Policy - Turning Pell Grants into a program that doesn’t run out on a first-come, first-served basis, so everyone who applies for and needs assistance receives assistance. - Simplifying the FAFSA form, so my students and their parents don’t need to be wealthy enough to have an accountant to complete it accurately. - Requiring all students to complete the FAFSA form, so institutions can discover who deserves a…
Read moreAugust 10, 2009 09:05 AM
I would be wary of assuming that the New York Post conducts rigorous evaluation research. Roland Fryer’s experiment assumes the existence of homo economicus, the utility-calculating relative of the people who currently occupy the planet. I wish I were as rational as Dr. Fryer assumes I am, but I suspect I am not, and today’s teenagers are probably only a little more rational than we dinosaurs. I would love to see some education research designed by behavioral economists to supplement the interesting work of Fryer and his colleagues.…
Read moreAugust 4, 2009 08:38 AM
The Secretary of Education is both right and wrong to insist on breaking down any alleged firewalls anywhere in state data systems. He writes, "Test scores alone should never drive evaluation, compensation or tenure decisions. But to remove student achievement entirely from evaluation is illogical and indefensible." Few would argue with that as a principle, and he is right on the principle. Beyond the starting-gate requirements of "Race to the Top," the details matter, and he is wrong when he glosses over those details. When Secretary Duncan writes that "analyzing students’ test scores is one of the best ways to…
Read moreJuly 6, 2009 09:55 AM
Updated at 10:31 a.m. on July 6. Anyone who believes in a panacea school governance reform is ignorant of the history of education in the United States. Mayoral control appears to be the latest governance fad in public education, and as with urban school bureaucracies with large ward-based school boards (which were once new!), rural school consolidation, small appointed urban boards, small elected urban boards, and site-based management, the proponents of mayoral control make exaggerated claims as to what it can accomplish.Mayoral control is no more "the" answer for urban school systems than any other proposed reform, and American schools…
Read moreJune 30, 2009 08:55 AM
How to spend ARRA stimulus funds isn't an either/or issue. I expect that the federal Department of Education will insist that states use the money to avoid layoffs and also take some steps towards the Race to the Top goals. Anyone who truly thinks that a budget disaster will somehow move reform should put their chips on California, because even with ARRA funding, California is in a horrible mess. All those who are looking to new teachers to bring fresh blood into public schools should be the last to want layoffs. If those new teachers are fired by the thousands,…
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