Sol Stern [92 titles]

1. E. D. Hirsch’s Curriculum for Democracy
   A content-rich pedagogy makes better citizens and smarter kids.
   Autumn 2009
2. School of Crock
   The Bloomberg administration and the UFT have increasingly joined forces on the schools.
   30 September 2009
3. The Promise Land
   George Gilder celebrates the civilizational achievements of the Jewish state.
   28 August 2009
4. A Teachers’ Contract for a New Era
   Seven achievable reforms for better schools
   21 July 2009
5. Win/Win/Lose
   A new pension deal serves the interests of the mayor and the teachers’ union, not the kids.
   25 June 2009
6. Pedagogy of the Oppressor
   Another reason why U.S. ed schools are so awful: the ongoing influence of Brazilian Marxist Paulo Freire
   Spring 2009
7. Catholic-School Closing Tragedy
   Patrick J. McCloskey reminds us about what we’re losing.
   13 February 2009
8. The Acorn File
   Background reading from City Journal’s writers
   14 October 2008
9. The Bomber as School Reformer
   The press—and debate moderators—shouldn’t let Bill Ayers and Barack Obama off the hook.
   6 October 2008
10. The Late, Great New York Sun
    For over six years, the paper defended liberty and supported culture.
    1 October 2008
11. Buyer’s Remorse on Mayoral Control
    As the school year begins, some crucial reforms are needed for the expiring legislation.
    2 September 2008
12. A Marshall Plan for Reading
    How New York schools can close the racial achievement gap
    Summer 2008
13. New York’s Lake Wobegon Effect
    The state’s rosy test scores don’t square with reality.
    26 June 2008
14. Reading First Still Works
    What’s flawed is the new federal study on it.
    19 May 2008
15. May 1968: 40 Years Later
    Six City Journal authors recall a spring that shook the world.
    Spring 2008
16. Obama’s Real Bill Ayers Problem
    The ex-Weatherman is now a radical educator with influence.
    23 April 2008
17. Is School Choice Enough?
    In City Journal’s Winter 2008 issue, contributing editor Sol Stern wrote a piece, School Choice Isn’t Enough, that ignited a firestorm of debate within the school-reform movement. Here, some of the nation’s top education scholars discuss the story, and Stern responds.
    24 January 2008
18. School Choice Isn’t Enough
    Instructional reform is the key to better schools.
    Winter 2008
19. False Prophet
    Who’s to blame for urban teacher flight: George W. Bush or Jonathan Kozol?
    Autumn 2007
20. The NAEP Doesn’t Lie
    The “nation’s report card” shows little or no improvement in New York City schools.
    15 November 2007
21. Debate, Don’t Demonize
    Why is the Bloomberg administration trying to discredit Diane Ravitch?
    1 November 2007
22. False Prophet
    Who’s to blame for urban teacher flight: George W. Bush or Jonathan Kozol?
    1 October 2007
23. Old-School Idealist
    Albert Shanker nobly led a teachers’ union that eventually became part of the problem.
    7 September 2007
24. Grading Mayoral Control
    Lauded in the press, Bloomberg’s education reforms are proving more spin than substance. Parents are losing patience.
    Summer 2007
25. Radical Math at the DOE
    “Social justice” teachers propagandize while Chancellor Klein looks the other way.
    11 May 2007
26. Save the Catholic Schools!
    They work miracles with inner-city kids, but without help, their own future is uncertain.
    Spring 2007
27. Radical Equations
    Marxist pedagogues are hard at work in New York’s public schools.
    19 March 2007
28. This Bush Education Reform Really Works
    Reading First, though much maligned, succeeds in teaching kids to read.
    Winter 2007
29. Gotham’s Telltale Reading Tests
    Read ’em and weep at P.S. 33.
    Autumn 2006
30. Eliot Spitzer’s CFE Problem
    Perhaps he can make the suit’s outcome less bad.
    Autumn 2006
31. The Ed Schools’ Latest—and Worst—Humbug
    Teaching for “social justice” is a cruel hoax on disadvantaged kids.
    Summer 2006
32. Reorganizing the Reorganization
    Mayor Bloomberg begins backtracking on education.
    Summer 2006
33. Won’t Someone Stop This Tragedy?
    Bloomberg’s education campaign is driving Gotham’s Catholic schools out of business.
    18 April 2006
34. City’s Pupils Get More Hype than Hope
    Test scores show little payoff for mayoral control.
    Winter 2006
35. Potemkin Education Reform
    Bloomberg and Klein offer more of the same instead of real change.
    17 November 2004
36. Yes, the Education President
    Though attacked and belittled, George W. Bush’s education reforms represent real progress.
    Summer 2004
37. New York’s Fiscal Equity Follies
    Overreaching judges misdiagnose Gotham’s educational ills and will surely worsen them.
    Spring 2004
38. Destined to Fail
    Okay, we'll end social promotion. Then what?
    Spring 2004
39. The Iron Chancellor
    Joel Klein starts sounding Orwellian.
    23 January 2004
40. Joel Klein’s Figleaf
    Chancellor Klein’s begrudging nod to phonics
    9 January 2004
41. Tragedy Looms for Gotham’s School Reform
    A fatal flaw may derail the mayor’s Herculean effort.
    Autumn 2003
42. Mayor Bloomberg’s Diana Lam Problem
    Bad enough that the deputy schools’ chancellor embraces discredited pedagogical approaches. Now ethical questions surround her too.
    21 August 2003
43. Ah, Those Black Panthers! Beautiful!
    The New York Times’s racial mendacity hits yet another new low.
    Summer 2003
44. Israel Without Apology
    It took me 30 years—and 9/11—to understand what it means to be a free democracy fighting Islamic terror.
    Summer 2003
45. Ah, those Black Panthers! How Beautiful!
    The New York Times’s racial mendacity hits yet another new low.
    27 May 2003
46. Gotham’s Education Reform Is in Trouble
    It’s time to jettison the much-touted new reading program—and the deputy chancellor who promoted it.
    11 April 2003
47. Bloomberg and Klein Rush In
    Under these two, mayoral control of Gotham’s schools threatens disaster.
    8 April 2003
48. ACORN’s Nutty Regime for Cities
    The nation’s largest left-wing group is trying to make a revolution, one city at a time. And it is getting results.
    Spring 2003
49. Bloomberg and Klein Rush In
    Under these two, mayoral control of Gotham’s schools threatens disaster.
    Spring 2003
50. Mayor Bloomberg’s No Excuses Speech
    The mayor’s revolutionary plans to reform Gotham schools are inspiring.
    17 January 2003
51. Compassionate Conservatism’s Next Step
    The president should jumpstart school reform with a D.C. voucher program.
    Winter 2003
52. Compassionate Conservatism’s Next Step
    The president should jump-start school reform with a D.C. vouchers program.
    15 November 2002
53. What the Voucher Victory Means
    The last big civil rights battle—to give poor minority kids good schools—can now begin in earnest.
    Autumn 2002
54. School Daze
    Their new contract makes Gotham’s teachers spend more time in the classroom. But they’re frittering that time away.
    Autumn 2002
55. School Daze
    Their new contract makes Gotham’s teachers spend more time in the classroom. But they’re frittering that time away.
    17 October 2002
56. Who Should Run Gotham’s Schools?
    The new chancellor needs the courage and vision to break completely with the system’s failed past.
    14 July 2002
57. An Epochal Victory for Kids
    The Supreme Court’s voucher decision gives new hope to inner-city pupils.
    28 June 2002
58. The Education Mayor?
    Michael Bloomberg may turn out to be Gotham’s biggest school reformer in half a century.
    Spring 2002
59. Showing the Flag
    At 8:45 AM on September 11, my 14-year-old son stood on the fourth floor at Stuyvesant High School, a few blocks from the World Trade Center, and watched the second hijacked plane hit one of the Twin Towers.
    Autumn 2001
60. Harold Levy’s Fuzzy Math
    The chancellor becomes just another defender of the staus quo.
    Summer 2001
61. Dems to Poor Kids: Get Lost
    New York’s Democrats mean to kill an education tax credit that would help poor families.
    Spring 2001
62. A Fair Day’s Work?
    The new UFT contract should make teachers earn their pay.
    Winter 2001
63. Falling Dominoes
    One by one, former voucher opponents are becoming supporters.
    Autumn 2000
64. The Vanishing Teacher and Other UFT Fictions
    The union blames poor schools on low teacher pay, which drives away qualified teachers. It’s a purely political myth.
    Spring 2000
65. Crew Flunks Out
    The chancellor became a captive of a dysfunctional system.
    Winter 2000
66. America’s Most Influential—and Wrongest—School Reformer
    The nation has eagerly swallowed all of Jonathan Kozol’s prescriptions for what ails the schools. It’s a cure that has made public education less healthy than ever.
    Winter 2000
67. The Vanishing School Day
    When parents on Manhattan's Upper West Side sent their kids back to P. S. 87 last month, they doubtless assumed that teachers were ready to get back into the classroom and teach.
    Autumn 1999
68. How Businessmen Shouldn’t Help the Schools
    Glamorous, yes—but the Principal for a Day program drafts businessmen, who ought to know better, into the wrong army.
    Summer 1999
69. Prophetic Minority?
    It was the term "teach-in" in the announcement from the Emergency Coalition Against Vouchers that first grabbed my attention.
    Summer 1999
70. Crew Mutinies
    Most striking about New York schools chancellor Rudy Crew's threat to resign over Mayor Giuliani's proposed experimental voucher program was its lack of proportion.
    Spring 1999
71. The Schools That Vouchers Built
    Now that Milwaukee and Cleveland have publicly-funded school voucher programs, we can see how vouchers work in practice. The verdict, after visits to four voucher-supported schools: a straight A.
    Winter 1999
72. No to Sports Stadium Madness
    A tax-funded Yankee Stadium in Manhattan is exactly the wrong idea.
    Autumn 1998
73. Squeezing Lemons
    Most New York City public school principals can't lose their jobs, even if they're incompetent, since ironclad union contracts and ill-conceived state tenure laws protect them.
    Autumn 1998
74. A School Reform Whose Time Has Come
    Thirty-three states boast charter schools—fully public schools demonstrably superior to those the public education monopoly runs. What’s keeping New York from climbing on board?
    Summer 1998
75. UFT Dress Code
    Not long ago, the Board of Education approved a resolution that required students in New York City's public elementary schools to wear uniforms.
    Summer 1998
76. The Rebirth of American History?
    In the schools, hopeful signs point toward a recovery of our national past—the glue that holds our common civic culture together.
    Spring 1998
77. School Choice: The Last Civil Rights Battle
    Thousands of the city’s children languish in a gulag of failed schools that spans three boroughs. The mayor should use the threat—and the reality—of vouchers to force the system to reform.
    Winter 1998
78. My Public School Lesson
    I sent my sons to New York City’s top public elementary school—and learned why the very best the school system can do just isn’t good enough, especially for minority kids.
    Autumn 1997
79. Who Says the Homeless Should Work?
    George McDonald now champions work and responsibility, not housing, as the cure for homelessness. This time he’s right.
    Summer 1997
80. Grading the Schools
    It was bad enough that the parents of New York City's public school students had to find out early this year that fewer than 1 in 3 of the system's third-graders read at or above grade level--a sure sign of educational bankruptcy.
    Spring 1997
81. How Teachers’ Unions Handcuff Schools
    No education reform can succeed until teachers’ unions stop demanding work rules that subvert education’s basic building block: the interaction between teacher and students.
    Spring 1997
82. Catholic-School Canard
    Autumn 1996
83. The Invisible Miracle of Catholic Schools
    They turn minority kids from the toughest urban neighborhoods into educated citizens who succeed. Why won’t New York join forces with them?
    Summer 1996
84. Eviction Notice
    Summer 1996
85. Off Course
    Last fall my wife, an English teacher in a New York City public school, received a form letter from the Board of Education informing her that her teaching license would be terminated at year’s end unless she completed six college-level credits in special education and two in 'human relations.'
    Spring 1996
86. Albany’s New Deck Chairs
    New York State, ranking near the bottom nationally in education measures such as dropout rates and SAT scores, urgently needs to join the national debate about reforms like charter schools, vouchers, and privatization that would challenge the monopoly of the education establishment that has presided over such failure. But legislative leaders from both parties seem determined to protect that establishment's interests.
    Spring 1996
87. The School Reform That Dares Not Speak Its Name
    In New York educational circles, the 'V' word is off-limits. But vouchers may be the best hope for reviving the failing public schools.
    Winter 1996
88. The Legal Aid Follies
    New York’s Legal Aid Society keeps championing the disorderly poor at the expense of their law-abiding neighbors.
    Autumn 1995
89. Let's Seize This Chance for School Reform
    The teachers’ contract, a key bar to education reform, is up for renegotiation in New York, and union leaders say they’re ready for innovation. Here’s how to hold them to their word.
    Spring 1995
90. Here's What We Have to Reform
    In the principal's office at the South Bronx's Morris High School hangs a faded picture of the school's most famous graduate, Colin Powell.
    Winter 1995
91. America Works
    A Venture to End Dependency
    Summer 1993
92. Liberalism and the City
    Did the old liberalism fail the city? Can a new liberalism save it?
    Autumn 1991

Breaking Free: Public School Lessons and the Imperative of School Choice
by Sol Stern