ESSAYS - Nonpartisan Education Review

Essays (Observations, Analysis, and Commentary)

2026:
• Shen, ... coming ...

2022:
• Benedetti & Holba, Finding "Pity" within the "Haggle and Nag" Rhetoric around Critical Race Theory (essay)
• Martinez, Bilingual Education: A Perennial Cultural Contention (essay)
• Granle, Overgeneralization in Bilingual Education and the Dual Language Classroom (essay)

2019:
• Stotsky, Why Were my Last Four Books Necessary? (essay)

2018:
• Wilson, Advanced Placement Calculus is not College Calculus (essay)
• Stamm, The Illusion of Rigor (essay)
• Phelps, What the Show Me Institute will not show us (essay)
• Stotsky, Who watches the watchmen? Transparency might guard the integrity of the tests given by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (essay)
• Stotsky, Is Common Core Racist? Check Out The Results (essay)

2017:
• Merrifield, Public School Choice is Not Good Enough: Very Costly with a Low Upside (pdf)
• Price, Constructivism is a Big Fat Con

2016:
• Price, Critical Thinking: Not all that critical
• Phelps, Teaching to the test: A very large red herring

More John Merrifield 2016 blog posts (essays)

• Free Market Possibly Fine but Not Needed # Innovation through School Choice and Free Enterprise # Inside Finland - Why Another of the Best Is Still Pretty Bad # Inside NOLA # Please Depersonalize School System Failure # Pricelessness in Action - Teacher Labor Markets # Problems with Grading Schools # Repeated Anti-Choice Nonsense # The Right and Wrong Ways to Improve School System Performance # The School System Transformation Dream Team

2015:
• Bishop, Note on Aspen Ideas Festival: Is Math Important?

• More John Merrifield 2015 blog posts (essays)

A Public School Common Core Context # Blaine vs Douglas County # Can One Size Fit All with Micro-Choice # Central Planning Approaches Have a Low Upside # Choice as a Right or Problem Solver # Choice Benefits for Non-Choosers # Coons-Sugarman vs Friedman on Pricelessness revisited # Costly Dissonance on Teacher Effectiveness # Deprofessionalized Teaching # Do Not Means Test # Dumbing Down to Guard Self-Esteem # Environmentalism and School Choice # Language Policy for Education Reform Discussions # Many Children Left Behind Not Just by Failed Schools # Maybe Central Planning at its Best # Measuring Choice and Competition # Mindless Fallacies About Accountability # More Imagined Competition Rhetoric # Need Better Teachers Sure # One Dimensional Thinking Run Amok # Open vs Expand # Political Control is the Central Problem # Realistic Expectations from Non-Trans Choice # Revolutionizing Student Assessment # School Grading Re-Visited # Selling out Schoolchildren # Small Effects Re-Affirmed # The Beat Goes On-The Latest NAEP scores # The Fixed Costs Fallacy # The Foolishness of the Fair Comparisons Demand # The Necessity of Universal Choice Evidence Documentation # The SB 76 Wars # The System Makes it Unnecessarily Difficult # The Unacknowledged Lesson from Testing Controversies # Top-Down vs Bottom-Up Accountability # Urgency Discovered in Fallacy # Vouchers OK but Obsolete # Whole System Reform Defined # Why College Degrees Have Become More Valuable # WSJ Fallacy Rant

2014:
• Phelps, The Gauntlet: Think Tanks and Federal Research Centers Misrepresent and Suppress Other Education Research

• More John Merrifield 2014 blog posts (essays)

A Key Myth About the Roots of the Problem # Charter Reform # Charters Pushing the Envelope # Common Core Standards for Schooling Markets # Competition vs Rivalry # Conversion to Charter isn't Enough # CRPEs Making School Choice Work # Decentralized Planning Works # Don't Defend the Chicago Charter Experiment # Exploiting a Passion for Athletics to Motivate Scholarship # Heroic Assumptions Re-Visited # Heroic Assumptions # Intellectual Prisoners of the Status Quo II # Intellectual Prisoners of the Status Quo # Leadership Symbolism Over Substance # More Hope Triumphing Over Experience in OKC # NAEP Improvement Needed # NOLA Challenges Blog # NOLA Challenges II # Persistence of Failing Schools # Political Accountability Problems NY # Price Less Means the Government is Deciding What it Should Cost # School Choice and Accountability # Silly Debilitating Private to Public Comparisons # Slippery Slope # Teacher Effectiveness deja vu # The Neon Deion CPS # The Recurrent Tragedy of Dispute of Lousy Experiments # The Separate Realities Smoking Gun # TPS Principals # Tuition Top off Spending by the Poor # UK Near-Voucher Experience # What is Different About the Schooling Industry # Why Defend Sweden etc. # With Friends Like These

2013:
• Oliphant, Chinese-Australian Pronunciation versus Standard American Pronunciation
• Quail, Nos Censuimus Igitur Essemus
• Fitzhugh, Bend it Like Truman
• Fitzhugh, It's the Students, Stupid!
• Stotsky, Literature or Technical Manuals: Who Should Be Teaching What, Where, and Why?

• More John Merrifield 2013 blog posts (essays)

Free Market Possibly Fine but Not Needed # Innovation through School Choice and Free Enterprise # Inside Finland - Why Another of the Best Is Still Pretty Bad # Inside NOLA # Please Depersonalize School System Failure # Pricelessness in Action - Teacher Labor Markets # Problems with Grading Schools # Repeated Anti-Choice Nonsense # The Right and Wrong Ways to Improve School System Performance # The School System Transformation Dream Team #

2012:
• Milgram, Private Data – The Real Story: A Huge Problem with Education Research
• Bishop & Milgram, A Response to Some of the Points of: When Academic Disagreement Becomes Harassment and Persecution


Phelps, Depraved Indifference: Testing Experts and Education Policy

• Phelps, Part 1. So Many Secrets
• Phelps, Part 2. The School-Test Publisher Complex


• Dancis, College Readiness--A Simple Description

2011:
• Dancis, U.S. Government should stop financing arithmetic avoidance


Point-Counterpoint: Educators, Cheating, & Testing Standards:
• Martel, Teaching in a Culture of Fear - the Atlanta Scandal
• Phelps, Educators cheating on tests is nothing new; Doing something about it would be
• Oliphant, Modern Metrology and the Revision of our Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing
• Phelps, Extended Comments on the draft Standards for Educational & Psychological Testing (but, in particular, draft chapters 9, 12, & 13)
• Haladyna, Using Student Tests to Evaluate Teachers - A Very Bad Idea


• Stamm, Quality versus quantity
• Stamm, The Real Source of Success in Japanese Education

2010:
• JunkScienceMom, Nothing Fair about the Fair Test Junk Science
• JunkScienceMom, FairTest's Fishy Finances
• Stamm, The Common Sense of Copying
• Oliphant, For-Profit Colleges and American Salesmanship — A Unique Opportunity
• Oliphant, GI Bill Students and Their Equal Opportunity to Fail
• Oliphant, Sina English and American Dictionaries: A New Partnership
• Oliphant, Too Clever by Half: The Economist Is Bullying Americans into Intellectual Submission
• Garelick, The Common Core Math Standards: When Understanding is Overrated
• Garelick, The Separate Path and the Well Traveled Road
• Lampley, Graduate Degree Programs: Plain Vanilla, Chocolate Fudge, or a Cherry on Top?

2009:
• Rasian, Higher Education Governance in Developing Countries, Challenges and Recommendations: Iran as a case study
• Garelick, Discovery learning in math: Exercises versus problems
In this article, Garelick confronts the myth perpetrated in education schools that math is incorrectly taught by teaching students to do "exercises" rather than solving "problems". The former are viewed as inauthentic experiences in which the student applies algorithms to previously learned types of problems in a mechanical type way. In fact, it is through the working of the so-called "exercises" that students can make meaningful discoveries which ultimately lead them to solving more complex problems. As it is, many of today's math programs have students reaching for the stars by standing on a two-legged stool.

2008:

• Phelps, The Role and Importance of Standardized Testing in the World of Teaching and Training
• Haider, Challenges in Higher Education: Special Reference to Pakistan and South Asian Developing Countries
• Oliphant, Should Americans over Fifty Try to Avoid Alzheimer's Disease? -- A Positive View
  
  2007:
• Franco, Reauthorization of NCLB: Time to Reconsider the Scientifically Based Research Requirement
• Kramer, The 25% Solution: Improving Instruction by Improving the NCLB Tests
• Sireci, Are Educational Tests Inherently Evil?
• Naughtin, What is the Cost of Not Going Metric?
• Scott, When an Intent to Protect becomes a License to Harm
• Throne, Distance Learning in Einstein's Fourth Dimension
  
  2006:
• Fasko, Special Education Services and Response to Intervention: What, Why, and How?
• Garelick, A Tale of Two Countries and One School District
• Hambleton, Update on MCAS: Is it Working? Is it Fair?
• Garelick, A Textbook Case in Textbook Adoption
• Honeycutt, Loomis, & Brulle, An Analysis of Merit Pay Reforms
  
  Point-Counterpoint: The Lake Wobegon Effect
• Phelps, A Tribute to John J. Cannell, M.D.
• Phelps, Further Comment on "Lake Woebegon: Twenty Years Later"
• McRae, Comment on "Lake Woebegone: Twenty Years Later"
• Cannell, Lake Woebegone: Twenty Years Later
  
  
• Foundational Essays: Nonpartisan Education Review Board Members on Standards, Curriculum and Instruction, Censorship and Transparency