Nicholas Lemann Quotations

One of the most consistent findings about low performing schools and students is that "home variables" (parental income and education, etc.) are more predictive than "school variables." But, having said that, we as a society can have much more effect on the school variables than on the home variables, so it's important and valuable to focus on the question of which interventions in schools are most effective and which are least effective.

In the current environment, attributing low student performance to teacher tenure is one of the great unproven causal links out there. The relationship just hasn't been examined very carefully, but we should all recognize that in higher education the strongest institutions generally have the most robust tenure systems, and in elementary and secondary, the states with the strongest teacher unions (and tenure systems) tend to have the highest student performance.

I am not against standardized tests. There are tests and tests and tests, and, to simplify, the ones I favor are criterion-referenced tests of skills, aligned with the curriculum. Social and emotional skills are important but skills are too. I find it heartbreaking that this is so often seen as an either-or choice. To get to the richness of studying literature, for example, you must first be an adept and confident reader. Whether you are is something a good test can measure.

Profound question is how do you measure the non-skills component of what goes on in schools: values, curiosity, critical thinking, and so on. That's very tough. Maybe everything worthwhile can't be measured.

The W.K. Kellogg Foundation grant recognizes our commitment, while at the same time it illustrates the commitment of the Kellogg Foundation, to challenging prejudice -- whether conscious or unconscious. Our goal at the Journalism School is to set a new, higher standard for education regarding the coverage of race and ethnicity. We endeavor to be leaders in the field.

This year's winners showed extraordinary initiative and creativity while attempting to tell stories of how wars and internal conflicts impact the lives of everyday people. Journalism as a public service was the Kurt Schork tradition, and this year's winners exemplify his legacy.

I think serious research tends to be associated with higher academic quality, more prestige, more resources, and even, heaven help us, better teaching, to a greater extent than you might think. Folks who don't have an active intellectual life become, though the long years of just teaching, less intellectually alive and exciting.

In journalism, especially, we tend to deal with large, complex systems by finding especially interesting people and story lines to focus on.

You can't create a successful politics of support for public education on the basis of asking voters not to care about skills, and tests that measure skills, at all.

I am always suspicious of the formulation that "politics" has prevented a great idea from being enacted by government. Politics IS government, in a democratic society. It's a challenge for school reformers, like reformers in any realm, to build a popular constituency for their work. If the people it's supposed to benefit vote against it, that tells me that the person pushing reform lacks political skill. And political skill is a good thing.