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Nicholas Lemann Biography

Nicholas Lemann

Nicholas Berthelot Lemann is the Joseph Pulitzer II and Edith Pulitzer Moore Professor of Journalism and Dean Emeritus of the Faculty of Journalism at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. He has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1999.

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Nicholas Lemann Quotes

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.

Greater, Intellectual, Long, Teaching, Thinking, Years

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.

Create, Skills, Successful, Support

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.

Focus, Having, Home, School

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.

Measured, Profound, School, Schools, Skills, Thinking

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.

Formulation, Government, Realm, School, Skills

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.

Choices, Emotional, Measure, Simplify, Skills

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.

Elementary, Links, Secondary, Teacher, Tend, Unions

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

Deal, Focus, Interesting, Large, People, Tend

Kasey Anderson

Kasey Anderson

Diana Dors

Diana Dors

Bobby Moore

Bobby Moore

Charles Tilly

Charles Tilly

Freddie Gibbs

Freddie Gibbs

Ben Klassen

Ben Klassen

Lucius Beebe

Lucius Beebe

Ken Loeffler

Ken Loeffler

Frank Stronach

Frank Stronach

Steny Hoyer

Steny Hoyer

Anne Sullivan Macy

Anne Sullivan Macy

Hugo Eckener

Hugo Eckener