HGSE in the Media

July 2008

Questioning the Value of Remedial Education
"Remedial education is expensive and controversial — but is it effective? That’s the question that two education researchers have attempted to answer based on an analysis of nearly 100,000 community college students in Florida. The scholars — Juan Carlos Calcagno of the Community College Research Center, at Teachers College of Columbia University, and Bridget Long of the Graduate School of Education at Harvard University — have decidedly mixed results to report." (Inside Higher Ed, 7/31/08)

Studies: Early Stress Handicaps Learning
"The message is that serious stress early in life is not only bad for learning, it is also bad for your health for the rest of your life." - Professor Jack Shonkoff (WBRZ News 2 Louisiana, 7/28/08)

Metro Needs Better Access to Programs
"The Harvard Family Research Project reported high-quality after-school programs improve attitudes toward school, promotion to the next grade, attendance, communication, problem-solving, physical activity and nutrition. Students are more likely to stay in school." (The Tennessean, 7/17/08)

Weigh Student Gains, NBPTS Urged
"For some reason, the teacher-effectiveness debate is broken into two camps: One side focuses on students’ achievement, and then there’s another side that focuses primarily on measures of teacher practice. We think the reasonable approach is not either, but both." - Professor Thomas Kane (Education Week, 7/16/08. Registration required.)

How to Mend a Blocked Brain
"I think that sometimes the very same business people who are extremely deliberate about their decisions in business become unduly euphoric and enthusiastic about stuff which in the cool light of reason shouldn't change them." - Professor Howard Gardner (The Sydney Morning Herald, 7/12/08)

Malaria Prevention in Schools Reduces Anaemia and Improves Educational Potential in Kenyan School Children
"Although it has long been suspected that malaria impairs school performance, this is the first study to provide evidence of a direct link between malaria and reduced attention in class." - Assistant Professor Matthew Jukes (News-Medical.net, 7/10/08)

Leading With Their Left
"Forced to 'adjust to a right-handed world, [left-handers] feel more marginal,' Howard Gardner, professor of cognition and education at Harvard, suggests in an e-mail. 'Marginality has its costs, but it typically allows you to see the world differently from other people,' he explains, 'and that can be a strength.'" (The Washington Post, 7/4/08)

What’s Next For After-School?
"And after reviewing a decade’s worth of after-school research, The Harvard Family Research Project recently concluded that high-quality, well-implemented programs benefit children in documented ways, including their academic achievement." (New York Nonprofit Press, July-August 2008)

Study Urges National Board to Weigh Student Gains
"In the new paper, though, researchers from Harvard University, Dartmouth College, and the Los Angeles Unified School District make a case for combining the current measures with newer, “value added” calculations that take into account the test-score gains that students make in applicants’ classes, or at least lending more weight in the assessment process to the individual tests..." (Education Week, 6/30/08)