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9134 in the collection
Fordham Foundation Announces 2005
Ohanian Comment: Oh my goodness.
By valor Fordham must mean that Marion Joseph successfully kept any staff development provider with a curriculum view different from hers out of California. Twenty-seven of us from around the country, published authors regarded as experts in our fields, filled out the 17-page form requesting to get on the list "approved" by the California State Board of Education when Joseph was the chief judge. We came from a variety of pedagogical perspectives and we all received identical form rejection letters. One of the items disqualifying us was "inadequate overhead transparencies."
Yes, the applicant had to indicate every word that would be uttered to teachers and include copies of any and all reading materials, overhead transparencies, recommended books. It provided a preview of the rigid structures soon to be imposed on California schools.
Reminder: Last years's Fordham winners were Eric Hanushek, Paul & Jean Hanna Senior Fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution for scholarship and Howard Fuller, Distinguished Professor of Education and founder/Director of the Institute for the Transformation of Learning, Marquette University, for valor.
The first year's winners were: Professor Anthony Bryk, University of Chicago, and Professor Paul E. Peterson, Harvard University, for scholarship. And Professor E.D. Hirsch, Jr., University of Virginia, for valor.
Hmmm. Brandl, Joseph, and Moe. Say it out loud. Do you remember Larry, Shemp, and Moe?
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The Thomas B. Fordham Foundation proudly announces that its third annual Fordham Prizes for Excellence in Education will be conferred upon John E. Brandl and Marion Joseph for valor and Terry M. Moe for distinguished scholarship.
"We're privileged to honor three great education change agents," said foundation president Chester E. Finn, Jr. "Each is a far-sighted and tireless crusader for the interests of children, an indomitable individual who rejected conventional thinking, pointed to needed changes, suffered plenty of abuse from protectors of the status quo, and hugely advanced the cause of school reform."
The Prize for Valor
Awarded to a leader(s) who has made major contributions to education reform through noteworthy accomplishments at the national, state, local, and/or school levels.
"Two self-styled 'liberal Democrats' share this year's valor prize," Finn commented: "Marion Joseph, sometimes called the 'Paul Revere of Phonics,' who almost single-handedly transformed reading instruction in California, and John Brandl, a policy pioneer who insisted to fellow legislators and citizens that Minnesota's children deserve education choices."
John E. Brandl served for years as a former Democratic member of the Minnesota House of Representatives and Senate. There he was instrumental in enacting many of the state's path-breaking K-12 reforms, especially those that made Minnesota one of the first places to institute programs of education choice, including statewide open enrollment in public schools and post-secondary options for low-income families. Among colleagues, he is known as Minnesota's "godfather of school choice."
A former Dean of the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute at the University of Minnesota, where he is now a professor, Brandl is also a Distinguished Professor at St. Johns University. He remains an advocate for more education choices for families and a thoughtful voice of dissent when his party cleaves to the status quo. His 1998 Brookings book, Money and Good Intentions are Not Enough, argues for choice and competition in public policy generally and education particularly.
Marion Joseph served as assistant to California's state superintendent of public instruction from 1970-1982. Her expertise in what she termed the "politics and policy of education" made it easy for her to recognize early in the 1990s that the state's K-12 curriculum was sorely flawed. Prompted by her grandson's struggles to learn to read using California's whole-language approach, she stepped out of retirement and back into the active education arena in 1997, when Governor Gray Davis appointed her to the State Board of Education, where she served until 2003. In this position, she spearheaded an overhaul of the statewide reading curriculum and successfully transformed reading instruction in the state.
She didn't stop there, in the end ushering in the Golden State's much-praised academic standards in six subjects and instituting standards-aligned curricula as well. This lifelong Democrat ardently believes that all kids can achieve when given the right opportunity and tools to do so and, since retiring from the State Board in 2003 at age 76 years, continues to champion the programs she believes will improve public education, even when faced with the vehement opposition of many. Governor Davis recognized her four decades of steadfast dedication to California's children when he declared February 5 to be Marion Joseph Day.
The Prize for Distinguished Scholarship
Awarded to a scholar who has made major contributions to education reform via research, analysis, and successful engagement in the war of ideas.
"Stanford's Terry Moe," said Finn, "the recipient of this year's award for scholarship, is one of America's foremost education analysts and thinkers, a brilliant political scientist who has helped us understand the functioning (and dysfunctioning) of the K-12 'delivery system' as well as the attitudes, dynamics and interest groups that shape it."
Terry M. Moe is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, a member of the Institution's Koret Task Force on K–12 education, and professor of political science at Stanford University.
He has done groundbreaking research on the interactions of politics and education, studying and explaining a host of issues, especially focused on school choice. Perhaps the best known of these is Politics, Markets, and America's Schools (co-authored with John Chubb), his examination of the dynamics of the public school system and the forces that keep it from changing. In Schools, Vouchers, and the American Public, Moe conducted a comprehensive survey of public attitudes toward schools and the public's receptiveness to vouchers. By enabling Americans to see how their education system is broken and unable to repair itself, he has also pointed the way toward market-based alternatives that would transform K-12 education into an enterprise more attentive to the needs of children and families.
About the Fordham Prizes for Excellence in Education
The Fordham Prizes were created in 2003 to recognize and reward distinguished scholars, practitioners, and policy makers who champion education reform based on these principles:
• Parents should have the right to select among a variety of high-quality schools for their children;
• All students, teachers, and schools can meet high standards, with the help of results-oriented accountability systems informed by rigorous assessments;
• Every school should deliver a content-rich curriculum taught by knowledgeable teachers; and
• Schools must serve first the educational needs of children, not the interests of institutions or adults.
The two prizes (valor and distinguished scholarship) are given annually. Each carries an award of $25,000. To read about previous years' winners, visit www.edexcellence.net and click "Fordham prizes."
For more information about the prizewinners and their accomplishments, please contact Jennifer Leischer, Communications Associate, at 202-223-5452 or by email at jleischer@edexcellence.net.
The Thomas B. Fordham Foundation is a nonprofit organization dedicated to research and action that advances the knowledge and reform of elementary and secondary education, both nationally and in Dayton, Ohio. The Foundation is not affiliated with Fordham University.
— Thomas B. Fordham Foundation
2004-12-01
http://www.edexcellence.net/foundation/about/press_release.cfm?id=13
INDEX OF OUTRAGES Pages: 366
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