HGSE in the Media

May 2007

Democrats Sketch Childhood Agenda
"Jack Shonkoff, a doctor and director of the Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University, said a greater focus should be placed on children's mental and emotional needs. He said professionals know how to treat mental and emotional problems in the very young, but 'we’re not channeling that knowledge.'" (Washington Times, 5/23/07)

4th-Grade Dip Stands Out in Reading Test Scores
"In the days before [the accountability movement], you never paid a lot of attention to a one-year change in scores. Unfortunately, now every year the data counts. No one has the luxury of saying, ‘There’s something odd with this year’s test, let’s spend some time figuring out what happened." – Professor Daniel Koretz (Miami Herald, 5/18/07)

New Demographic Racial Gap Emerges
"John B. Diamond, a professor of education at Harvard, said that ‘there are patterns of school funding that suggest that may be a problem down the line.’ But he also said the impact might be mitigated by two factors. Because of persistent residential segregation, he said, elderly white voters do not necessarily live in the same school districts as young members of minorities." (New York Times, 5/16/07)

Howard Gardner's "Quintet of Minds"
"We’re all inundated with information, but it’s largely undigested and unevaluated. People who can’t (synthesize) are going to be at an enormous disadvantage." – Professor Howard Gardner (Harvard Gazette, 5/10/07)

In Digital Age, More T ’s are Crossed Poorly
"As a result, formal handwriting is on the way to becoming more of an ‘art form’ than practical skill, according to Katherine Boles, a lecturer at Harvard University's Graduate School of Education . ‘Computers are just taking over,’ said Boles." (Boston Globe, 5/6/07.)

Teacher and Education Politics
"Education reform is a futile exercise unless you have the right people in the classroom. ... The problem is we've been going about it the wrong way." – Professor Tom Kane (On Point, NPR.com, 5/3/07)

An Isolated Boy in a World of Strangers
"Here is this person at Virginia Tech who may have been an adult academically, but emotionally and socially, he's clearly a child who's been stunted. He didn't know how to deal with people. He lived in pure isolation." – Lecturer Josephine Kim (The Washington Post, 4/21/07)