Iris Comens Rotberg
This collection of publications, news articles, letters, memoirs, and other memorabilia has been put together for our family, present and future. The selections are related primarily to work, with some personal items. The collection is far from complete. Stashed away somewhere in my office are years of other materials—courses, dissertations, e-mails, letters, and articles describing bureaucratic issues and political intrigues.
The personal selections posted here (primarily for the 2000s period) are only an infinitesimal sample of what we have online, and at home in filing cabinets, drawers, and boxes, where some of our most valued mementos are kept. These include decades of letters and e-mails to and from children and grandchildren.
This collection spans eight decades during the period from the 1950s to the 2020s. Each decade includes multiple listings on a range of topics. The overviews that follow focus primarily on education policy research, which is the basis for many of the listed publications and other writings.
1950s/1960s: Posted here are examples of a college paper and three basic research articles in the field of psychology written under a postdoctoral grant from the National Science Foundation.
1970s: This was the age of relevance, and I moved from basic psychological research to policy research, an emerging field that focused on public policy issues and was largely centered in Washington, D.C. The Coleman Report, considered one of the first examples of education policy research, had been published in 1966. Listed here are other early examples of education policy research, including evaluations of federal education programs initiated as part of Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty, and subsequent Congressional testimony based on these evaluations. Researchers learned the hard way there are no quick fixes to compensate for centuries of inequality and poverty.
1980s: Education policy research during this period was influenced by “A Nation at Risk” and its words, “a rising tide of mediocrity” to describe the U.S. education system. The specific concern was that the United States was falling behind other nations, particularly the Soviet Union, in math and science education. That concern, widely debated in the education policy literature and the media, received considerable public attention. In addition, the pros and cons of bilingual education were very much part of the policy debate of the time.
1990s: The debates begun earlier expanded beyond the competition between the United States and the Soviet Union to include a wide range of countries. Many argued that the international test-score comparisons demonstrated U.S. students’ weakness in math and science compared to students in a number of other countries. Others pointed to serious sampling flaws that invalidated the conclusions and interpretations of the comparisons. This public controversy further increased the visibility of education policy research and contributed to a large literature on both education policy and sampling issues in comparative research.
2000s: During this decade, “No Child Left Behind” legislation was introduced by George W. Bush in an attempt to reduce the achievement gap linked to socioeconomic status. The legislation was based on the premise that the gap in standardized test scores would decrease if teachers were held accountable for their students’ scores. The edited book, “Balancing Change and Tradition in Global Education Reform,” listed here, demonstrated that the U.S. reliance on student test scores to evaluate teachers has negative consequences for both teachers and students and is the exception rather than the norm in most other industrialized countries.
2010s: This decade is marked by the proliferation of charter schools, which had begun during George W. Bush’s presidency and continued under Barack Obama’s. Charter schools are public schools that are not part of the traditional education system and are exempt from many of its regulations. On average, charter schools have little impact on student achievement one way or the other, but they do increase segregation, as demonstrated by research analyses and the edited book, “Choosing Charters: Better Schools or More Segregation?,” listed here. In addition, research papers on related policy topics—test-based accountability, international test-score comparisons, and economic competitiveness—are included in this decade.
2020s: The start of the decade coincided with the start of the COVID pandemic, and some of the posts reflect the pandemic’s social and educational impacts. The 2020s posts are more eclectic than the posts of earlier decades and range from policy articles to book, movie, and travel recommendations. The policy articles alone consider several topics, including the relevance (or irrelevance) of policy research, academic jargon, affirmative action, housing policy, and international education. In general, the posts for the 2020s are much more personal than those for earlier decades, a reflection of what happened to be available on my iPhone after we moved from Potomac to Denver.
I hope you find something of interest in these selections. But, more important, I hope you know they come with my love always.
Iris