Interesting general writings
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Why Johnny’s Teacher Can’t Teach by Heather Mac Donald, City Journal Spring 1998.
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Stand and Deliver Revisited by Jerry Jesness, Reason Magazine July 2002.
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The Ed Schools’ Latest — and Worst — Humbug by Sol Stern, City Journal Summer 2006.
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Sailer’s four point plan for improving schools by Steve Sailer, VDARE.com, June 29, 2008.
Writings and debates on school choice
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Is School Choice Enough? — a debate on City Journal featuring Jay P. Greene, Thomas W. Carroll, Andrew J. Coulson, Robert Enlow, E. D. Hirsch, Matthew Ladner, Neal McCluskey, Diane Ravitch, Sol Stern.
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Markets versus monopolies in education, a policy analysis by Andrew Coulson for the Cato Institute in September 2008.
Writings and debates on pedagogy
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Transcript of a speech by Ed Hirsch to the California State Board of Education, April 10, 1997.
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Lockhart’s Lament — a lamentation about the state of mathematics education in the United States. The page linked to gives a brief description and a link to the 25-page PDF.
Robin Hanson in the purpose of education
See all his blog posts tagged academia.
Here are the posts I found most interesting:
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Why schools test often (May 31, 2010)
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School attitudes (June 1, 2010)
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School isn’t about learning (August 23, 2010)
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Functions of school (August 25, 2010)
Bryan Caplan on the signaling theory of education
Bryan Caplan is planning to write a book on the theory that much of education; see these blog posts (recommended order):
More posts are here. See also this discussion on Cato Unbound on Charles Murray’s book Real Education, where Caplan, as one of the participants, pushes the signaling model.
Other miscellaneous writings on whether schooling really teaches anything
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Case for unschooling by David Friedman
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How to do what you love by Paul Graham (not really about school, but mentions it)
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Why education is productive — a parable of men and beasts by Tyler Cowen on the Marginal Revolution weblog
