Sunday's New York Times Magazine contained a brace of insightful pieces by crack journalist James Traub. "Does it Work?" explores the tension between education practitioners who prize "a priori beliefs about the way children ought to learn [and] about the relative value of different kinds of knowledge," and those at the Education Department and on Capitol Hill who seek to mandate the use of "scientifically based research" by U.S. schools. No Child Left Behind, writes Traub, may mark a turning point in the battle; classroom practices will henceforth have to meet explicit criteria to prove they "work" in order to qualify for federal grants. His second piece, "Success for Some," casts a skeptical though not unfriendly eye upon three prominent whole-school reform models - Success for All, Accelerated Schools and Core Knowledge - which represent the scripted, progressive and traditional approaches to classroom transformation. Created to assess evidence of scientific effectiveness, the Bush administration's newly minted "What Works Clearinghouse" will devote much time and treasure to examining such models. See "Does it work?" and "Success for Some."
