Education Week - March 25, 2015 - 16

COVER TO COVER
Journal's Hybrid Role, Policy Views
Earn It Prominence-and Controversy
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1
of a school-choice-minded panel at
Stanford University, the Hoover Institution's
Koret Task Force on K-12
Education.
Education Next has been closely
associated with such approaches
to improving education as charter
schools, private school vouchers,
greater teacher accountability, and
digital learning.
"We do have hobbyhorses, I'll give
you that," Paul E. Peterson, the editor-in-chief
and a professor at the
John F. Kennedy School of Government
at Harvard University, said in
an interview. He insisted, though,
that the journal abides by its mission
statement that in "the stormy seas of
school reform," it will go "where the
evidence points" in promoting "bold
change" in K-12 education.
"I think we have tried to live up to
that," said Mr. Peterson, whose own
research has often centered on the
efficacy of vouchers and charters.
"Of course, we do get criticisms from
many sides," he added. "People throw
rotten tomatoes at us routinely."
'Provocative' Cover Image
Criticism pelted Education Next a
few weeks ago over the cover for its
spring issue.
To mark the 50th anniversary of
the document best known as the
Moynihan Report, a 1965 analysis
that noted a rising proportion
of black children being raised in
households headed by unmarried
mothers, the journal's editors compiled
a package of articles examining
the current state of the American
family.
The original report by Daniel Patrick
Moynihan, then an assistant U.S.
labor secretary and later a U.S. senator
from New York, was titled "The
Negro Family: The Case for National
Action." It was deeply controversial for
its discussion of racial "pathologies."
Education Next's retrospective
carries the cover headline "Today's
American Family? 50 Years After the
Moynihan Report" above an illustration
of a young black couple in a pose
inspired by Grant Wood's "American
Gothic" painting, but with the mother
holding a baby and the image of the
father fading from view.
Michael J. Petrilli, the president
of the Washington-based Thomas
B. Fordham Institute and one of
five executive editors of Education
Next, put the cover image out on
Twitter-and asked his followers
whether they found it "provocative"
or "inappropriate."
Mr. Petrilli quickly got his answer.
Some on Twitter called the cover racist
and asked why in 2015 a package
about single-parent families needed to
be illustrated with African-Americans
rather than people of other races.
"Your cover is perpetrating blatant
ugly fraud about Black fathers/
families," said a tweet by Melinda D.
Anderson, a Washington freelance
writer on education and race.
Mr. Petrilli soon apologized for
promoting the cover in a way that
he acknowledged was "to provoke
a reaction." A spokeswoman for the
Fordham Institute said Mr. Petrilli
had no further comment on the controversy
or on Education Next.
Mr. Peterson, the journal's top editor,
responded quickly, too, but he was
unapologetic about the cover. He wrote
on Education Next's blog that while
"single parenthood is not the prerogative
of any one racial group," it would
be "disrespectful of Moynihan's original
contribution to illustrate a reconsideration
of the report entitled 'The
Negro Family' on its 50th anniversary
with a portrait of a family from another
racial background."
In his interview with Education
Week, Mr. Peterson declined to elaborate
on the matter.
An Academic Discussion
On March 5, just a couple of days
after the controversy erupted, Education
Next held a half-day symposium
in Washington about the
Moynihan Report's anniversary.
Outside, a 7-inch snowfall was
more than enough to shut down most
of official Washington. But Mr. Peterson,
down from the snow-ravaged
Boston area, was disinclined to cancel
the event, in part because it was
going to be webcast from the Hoover
Institution's new Washington office.
(Hoover is the nominal publisher
of Education Next, with Harvard's
Program on Education Policy and
Governance-which Mr. Peterson
directs-and the Fordham Institute's
parent, the Thomas B. Fordham
Foundation, listed as sponsoring
institutions.)
With an enlarged version of the
Education Next cover displayed on
an easel, the symposium was about
as far away as one could get from
a Twitter debate. It included scholars
such as William Julius Wilson,
a Kennedy School expert on urban
poverty; Greg J. Duncan, a professor
of education and economics at
the University of California, Irvine;
and Isabel V. Sawhill, a senior fellow
at the Brookings Institution in
Washington. They painstakingly
delivered summaries of their articles
in the Education Next issue
assessing the legacy of the Moynihan
Report.
U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander, RTenn.,
the chairman of the Senate
education committee, told of working
down the hall from Mr. Moynihan in
President Richard M. Nixon's White
House. And the conservative columnist
George F. Will, looking perfectly
pressed despite the snowstorm, delivered
some anecdotes about Mr.
Moynihan's outlook on poverty and
education.
"The single-parent family seems
to be a more critical variable today
than ever before," Mr. Peterson said
during the session.
The current contention aside, Education
Next is known for its mix of
magazine features, peer-reviewed research
articles, and its annual survey
about attitudes toward education.
16 | EDUCATION WEEK | March 25, 2015 | www.edweek.org
The journal, which is sold on wellstocked
newsstands, at a cover price
of $7, as well as by subscription, has
some 16,000 readers, according to its
advertising rate card, and its website
gets more than 110,000 unique
visitors per month.
Mr. Peterson said that one of the
journal's most widely felt pieces
was a 2010 research article about
snow days. The article, by Dave E.
Marcotte and Benjamin Hansen,
suggested that as more school time
is lost to snow days during the winter,
the more negative the effect is
on test scores.
"That piece has been used again
and again in legislatures to justify
longer school years," said Mr.
Peterson.
Another article with impact was
a 2014 research piece by Jay P.
Greene, Brian Kisida, and Daniel
H. Bowen on the educational value
of field trips. Taking students to
an art museum, the authors concluded,
is good for critical-thinking
skills.
Paul Teske, the dean at the school
of public affairs at the University of
Colorado Denver, called it "a cross
between a journal and a magazine,
and it's more digestible than many
academic journals." He added: "It
has a perspective that is pro-choice,
pro-charter, pro-teacher-accountability-basically,
the mainstream
reform agenda."
Sizing Up 'Point of View'
The education historian Diane
Ravitch, in her eponymous blog,
has called Education Next part of
a campaign funded by "billionaires
and millionaires ... to rid the nation
of teachers' unions."
In an interview, the New York University
professor, who has moved leftward
from her days as a U.S. Department
of Education appointee under
President George H.W. Bush, noted
that she was an original board member
of Education Next and a contributor.
Ms. Ravitch parted ways with the
journal, she said, in a disagreement
over a 2008 cover story featuring
then-Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg
of New York as a knight in shining
armor saving the city's schools.
"I think it's an interesting magazine,
but it's not nonpartisan. It's
not bipartisan," she said. "It represents
a respectable point of view. It's
a conservative point of view. I just
don't happen to agree with it."
Andrew J. Rotherham, a former
White House education aide to President
Bill Clinton and now an education
consultant, said he believes
Education Next has not committed
the sin of being boring or repetitive.
"Underneath the daily howling
at the moon that goes on in education
blogs and on Twitter, there is a
much smaller group of people who
are trying to figure out what works
and what doesn't," he said. "Education
Next provides that context that
people want to read."
Bill Bushaw, the chief executive
of the educators' group Phi Delta
AT AT GLANCE:
EDUCATION
NEXT
FOUNDED: 2001
PUBLISHER: Stanford University's
Hoover Institution, with Harvard
University's Program on
Education Policy and Governance
and the Thomas B. Fordham
Foundation as sponsoring
institutions.
MISSION: "In stormy seas of
school reform, ... [to give]
voice (without fear or favor) to
worthy research, sound ideas,
and responsible arguments. Bold
change is needed in American
K-12 education, but Education
Next partakes of no program,
campaign, or ideology. It goes
where the evidence points."
FEATURES: Magazine stories,
peer-reviewed educational
research articles, and an annual
survey on K-12 education issues.
FREQUENCY: Quarterly in print,
plus an active website.
SOURCE: Education Week
Education Next's articles
have included, from top,
its retrospective on the
Moynihan Report, with
a controversial cover
image; a piece on school
choice; and a look at
the educational value
of field trips.
Kappa International, which
publishes the Kappan journal,
has taken notice of one
feature of Education Next:
its annual poll on education
issues.
In a bit of guerrilla marketing, the
newer journal has published its own
poll results one day before the progressive-leaning
Kappan has released
its widely cited poll of public opinion
about education late each summer.
"Their poll is well done," said Mr.
Bushaw, whose pdk poll, conducted
by the Gallup organization, goes back
more than 50 years. He
notes that aside from a few
results, such as a variation
between the polls last year
on attitudes toward the
Common Core State Standards
(the pdk-Gallup poll
showed 33 percent favor the
standards; Education Next
had 53 percent), the journals'
polls are fairly consistent.
Mr.
Peterson, for his part,
said that much can depend
on the wording of a poll
question.
"There is science in the
sampling, but the questions
are an art," he said. "I think
reading the two polls together
is the best way to understand
public opinion about education."
While the Kappan is not distributed
on newsstands, at least
one progressive-minded education
journal is. Rethinking Schools, published
out of Milwaukee by a nonprofit
advocacy organization of the
same name, sends some 1,600 copies
of each quarterly issue to newsstands,
its website says.
Kevin Welner, an education professor
at the University of Colorado
Boulder with a more liberal outlook,
directs the National Education Policy
Center there, which regularly
scrutinizes the K-12 policy reports
of think tanks, many of them conservative
or choice-oriented.
While his policy center has analyzed
some of the longer papers that
underlie the research articles in the
journal, he said, the Education Next
articles themselves "tend not to have
enough meat on them to analyze."
"But I don't intend that as a criticism,"
Mr. Welner was quick to add.
"I think that for what they are trying
to do, they do it well."
"Look, it's published by one think
tank and co-sponsored by [two others],
so no one should be surprised
by its outlook," he said. "I think that,
over the years, they have put out
valuable and interesting content."
He wishes that "when you walked
by the newsstand, there were two
or three other magazines offering
other perspectives on education."
"That," he said, "would be a nice,
healthy marketplace of ideas."
http://www.edweek.org
Education Week - March 25, 2015

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