The article analyzes one claim that I make about Howard Gardner's work on MI: Multiple intelligences has had the greatest influence on educators' beliefs and talk about differences in children's intelligence, moderate to high influence on the formal curriculum and instructional materials, and least influence on mainstream teaching and assessment…

Examines the history of students who cannot do what educators want them to do, noting how educators have labeled poor performers in different periods and how these labels reflect both attitudes and institutional conditions. The paper summarizes four major historical explanations for why children fail and explores implications of this history for…

Beginning with the assumption that schools change reforms as much as reforms change schools, this paper argues that the judgment of a reform's success depends heavily on the criteria used to make the judgment. Criteria used by policymakers (effectiveness, popularity, and fidelity) and practitioners (adaptability and longevity) are identified and…

This article offers a brief historical analysis of corporate involvement in public schools and discusses still unresolved issues in the current passion for increasing private-sector participation in public schools. The business community's role and the importance of educators striking a balance between external and internal interests are also…

Lessons learned in the National Teacher Corps and Masters of Arts in Teaching efforts have been forgotten by the Holmes Group, it is asserted. To promise major changes in school structures and teaching practices through university reforms, state certification policies, and professional development schools ignores how schools have persisted over…

Examines why computers are used less often in classrooms than in other organizations; suggests that technological innovations have never been central to national school improvement movements, and that the dominant cultural belief about teaching, learning, and proper knowledge and about the way schools are organized for instruction inhibits…