David K Cohen
Biographic Data
| ID | 371639 |
|---|---|
| NAME | David K Cohen |
| GIVEN NAMES | David K |
| FAMILY NAME | Cohen |
| SIGNATURE | COHEN D K |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Michigan |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 31 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 188 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 31 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1965 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
How Teachers Might Have Taught but Most Didn’t, and Why
We discuss one of the oldest ambitions in U.S. education: that teachers should treat children as active learners, teaching should be intellectually engaging, teachers should respect students’ thinking, and schools should cultivate thoughtful work. These ideas originated when Horace Mann and his allies campaigned for them. We revisit them and take up a key problem in the study of U.S. schooling: can those ambitions be turned into regular work in m…
Centralization and Subnational Capacity: The Struggle to Make Federalism Work Equitably in Public Education
Vast disparities between and within American states’ responses to the COVID-19 pandemic have evoked renewed attention to whether greater centralization might enhance investments in subnational capacity and remedy subnational inequalities or instead erode subnational organizational capacity. Developments in American public education (1997–2015) offer perspective on this puzzle, which we examine by applying interrupted time series analysis to a nov…
The Dilemmas of Educational Reform
The environment of U.S. schools has changed dramatically over a quarter century as standards tied to test-based accountability and market competition became commonplace. We examine the issues that school systems face in this changing environment, to identify considerations for researchers interested in reform as educational system building. We highlight a central dilemma: Systems manage environmental pressures to become more coherent enterprises …
Why Reform Sometimes Succeeds: Understanding the Conditions That Produce Reforms That Last
Counter to narratives of persistently failed school reform, we argue that reforms sometimes succeed and seek to understand why. Drawing on examples from the founding of public schools to the present, we find that successful system-wide reforms addressed problems that teachers thought they had by being consistent with prevailing norms and values, mobilizing a significant public constituency, and building the needed educational infrastructure. We d…
The State of Title I: Developing the Capability to Support Instructional Improvement
Susan L. Moffitt, David K. Cohen, The State of Title I: Developing the Capability to Support Instructional Improvement, RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences, Vol. 1, No. 3, The Elementary and Secondary Education Act at Fifty and Beyond (December 2015), pp. 187-202
Teaching and Its Predicaments
Ever since Socrates, teaching has been a difficult and even dangerous profession. Why is good teaching such hard work? In this provocative, witty, and sometimes rueful book, David K. Cohen writes about the predicaments that teachers face. Like therapists, social workers, and pastors, teachers embark on a mission of human improvement. They aim to deepen knowledge, broaden understanding, sharpen skills, and change behavior. One predicament is that …
The Ordeal of Equality: Did Federal Regulation Fix the Schools?
American schools have always been locally created and controlled. But ever since the Title I program in 1965 appropriated nearly one billion dollars for public schools, federal money and programs have been influencing every school in America. With incisive clarity and wit, David K. Cohen and Susan L. Moffitt argue that enormous gaps existed between policies and programs and the real-world practices that they attempted to change.
Policy and Practice: The Dilemma
The relations between policy and practice embody a dilemma. Policies aim to solve problems, yet the key problem solvers are those who have the problem. Governments devise instruments to encourage implementation, but they help only if used well by those with the problem, whose capability is often weak. The realization of policy in practice thus depends on the fit between capabilities that support implementation and aims. The more aims outstrip cap…
Resources, Instruction, and Research
Many researchers who study the relations between school resources and student achievement have worked from a causal model, which typically is implicit. In this model, some resource or set of resources is the causal variable and student achievement is the outcome. In a few recent, more nuanced versions, resource effects depend on intervening influences on their use. We argue for a model in which the key causal agents are situated in instruction; a…
Learning Policy: When State Education Reform Works
"Education reformers and policymakers argue that improved students' learning requires stronger academic standards, stiffer state tests, and accountability for students' scores. Yet these efforts seem not to be succeeding in many states. The authors of this important book argue that effective state reform depends on conditions that most reforms ignore: coherence in policy and practice, as well as opportunities for professional learning." "The book…
Reform by the Book: What Is—or Might Be—the Role of Curriculum Materials in Teacher Learning and Instructional Reform
Reform by the Book: What Is: Or Might Be: The Role of Curriculum Materials in Teacher Learning and Instructional Reform
Deborah Loewenberg Ball, David K. Cohen, Reform by the Book: What Is: Or Might Be: The Role of Curriculum Materials in Teacher Learning and Instructional Reform?, Educational Researcher, Vol. 25, No. 9 (Dec., 1996), pp. 6-8+14
What Is the System in Systemic Reform
policy. State and federal policy is not the only way to pursue improved instruction-The Coalition for Essential Schools, Accelerated Schools, and the New Standards Project all do so largely outside the framework of policy-but systemic reformers have viewed government as their chief vehicle. The leading examples of changed state and national policy include the California and Vermont reforms, Goals 2000, the NSF State Systemic Reform Initiative, an…
A Revolution in One Classroom: The Case of Mrs. Oublier
This essay probes the relationship between instructional policy and teaching practice. In the mid 1980s, California State officials launched an ambitious effort to revise mathematics teaching and learning. The aim was to replace mechanical memorization with mathematical understanding. This essay considers one teacher’s response to the new policy. She sees herself as a success for the policy: she believes that she has revolutionized her mathematic…
Revolution in one classroom
This chapter probes the relationship between instructional policy and teaching practice. In the mid-1980s, California State officials launched an ambitious effort to revise mathematics teaching and learning. The aim was to replace mechanical memorization with mathematical understanding. This chapter considers one teacher's response to the new policy. She sees herself as a success for the policy: she believes that she has revolutionized her mathem…
Les nationalistes nord-africains face au sionisme (1929-1939)
En août 1929, la Palestine, alors sous mandat britannique, fut le théâtre de graves incidents entre Juifs et Arabes. Ces événements provoquèrent un regain de tension entre population arabe et minorité juive en Afrique du Nord. A la tête de chaque groupe ethnique, nous trouvions les nationalistes maghrébins, d'une part, et les militants sionistes de l'autre. La propagande sioniste, qui était le fait d'une faible minorité au sein des communautés ju…
Compromise and Diversity in the American High School
The Shopping Mall High School: Winners and Losers in the Educational Marketplace
The American Common School: A Divided Vision
Usable Knowledge: Social Science and Social Problem Solving
Solving Problems of Bureaucracy: Limits on Social Science
Functions and Fantasies: Understanding Schools in Capitalist America
SCHOOLING IN CAPITALIST AMERICA (1) will make waves in the history of education, but it is only incidentally concerned with history. Rather, it is an effort to locate schooling in the social and economic context of capitalist society. The authors seek to offer a comprehensive account of the role schools have served in the American economic structure;they advance a critique of efforts to change or reform schools; and they suggest an alternative vi…
Segregation, desegregation, andbrown
Inequality: A Reassessment of the Effect of Family and Schooling in America
Education and Race
WHATEVER ELSE written history may offer, it is bound to exhibit the preoccupations of its authors as faithfully as it records the experience of its subjects. As I understand the purpose of this symposium, it is an effort to sample such preoccupations-to produce a decent reflection of the concerns of the moment-unmediated by much effort to see how well they seem to fit evidence of the past. Although living, breathing historians are probably unused…
Reform by the Book: What Is—or Might Be—the Role of Curriculum Materials in Teacher Learning and Instructional Reform
Why Reform Sometimes Succeeds: Understanding the Conditions That Produce Reforms That Last
Counter to narratives of persistently failed school reform, we argue that reforms sometimes succeed and seek to understand why. Drawing on examples from the founding of public schools to the present, we find that successful system-wide reforms addressed problems that teachers thought they had by being consistent with prevailing norms and values, mobilizing a significant public constituency, and building the needed educational infrastructure. We d…
The Dilemmas of Educational Reform
The environment of U.S. schools has changed dramatically over a quarter century as standards tied to test-based accountability and market competition became commonplace. We examine the issues that school systems face in this changing environment, to identify considerations for researchers interested in reform as educational system building. We highlight a central dilemma: Systems manage environmental pressures to become more coherent enterprises …
What Is the System in Systemic Reform
policy. State and federal policy is not the only way to pursue improved instruction-The Coalition for Essential Schools, Accelerated Schools, and the New Standards Project all do so largely outside the framework of policy-but systemic reformers have viewed government as their chief vehicle. The leading examples of changed state and national policy include the California and Vermont reforms, Goals 2000, the NSF State Systemic Reform Initiative, an…
Policy and Practice: The Dilemma
The relations between policy and practice embody a dilemma. Policies aim to solve problems, yet the key problem solvers are those who have the problem. Governments devise instruments to encourage implementation, but they help only if used well by those with the problem, whose capability is often weak. The realization of policy in practice thus depends on the fit between capabilities that support implementation and aims. The more aims outstrip cap…
Functions and Fantasies: Understanding Schools in Capitalist America
SCHOOLING IN CAPITALIST AMERICA (1) will make waves in the history of education, but it is only incidentally concerned with history. Rather, it is an effort to locate schooling in the social and economic context of capitalist society. The authors seek to offer a comprehensive account of the role schools have served in the American economic structure;they advance a critique of efforts to change or reform schools; and they suggest an alternative vi…
Centralization and Subnational Capacity: The Struggle to Make Federalism Work Equitably in Public Education
Vast disparities between and within American states’ responses to the COVID-19 pandemic have evoked renewed attention to whether greater centralization might enhance investments in subnational capacity and remedy subnational inequalities or instead erode subnational organizational capacity. Developments in American public education (1997–2015) offer perspective on this puzzle, which we examine by applying interrupted time series analysis to a nov…
Education and Race
WHATEVER ELSE written history may offer, it is bound to exhibit the preoccupations of its authors as faithfully as it records the experience of its subjects. As I understand the purpose of this symposium, it is an effort to sample such preoccupations-to produce a decent reflection of the concerns of the moment-unmediated by much effort to see how well they seem to fit evidence of the past. Although living, breathing historians are probably unused…
Reform by the Book: What Is: Or Might Be: The Role of Curriculum Materials in Teacher Learning and Instructional Reform
Deborah Loewenberg Ball, David K. Cohen, Reform by the Book: What Is: Or Might Be: The Role of Curriculum Materials in Teacher Learning and Instructional Reform?, Educational Researcher, Vol. 25, No. 9 (Dec., 1996), pp. 6-8+14
Les nationalistes nord-africains face au sionisme (1929-1939)
En août 1929, la Palestine, alors sous mandat britannique, fut le théâtre de graves incidents entre Juifs et Arabes. Ces événements provoquèrent un regain de tension entre population arabe et minorité juive en Afrique du Nord. A la tête de chaque groupe ethnique, nous trouvions les nationalistes maghrébins, d'une part, et les militants sionistes de l'autre. La propagande sioniste, qui était le fait d'une faible minorité au sein des communautés ju…
The Shopping Mall High School: Winners and Losers in the Educational Marketplace
The American Common School: A Divided Vision
Comte's Changing Sociology
The significange of Comte's sociology has in the past been attributed to his effort to formulate a scientific approach to social data. This view inadequate.While Comte's early sociological ideas represented an effort to create a predictive science of progress, as a result of his confrontation with the with the problems of industrialism and with trends in conservative social thought, his orientation changed. He sought to deal with social disorgani…
The State of Title I: Developing the Capability to Support Instructional Improvement
Susan L. Moffitt, David K. Cohen, The State of Title I: Developing the Capability to Support Instructional Improvement, RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences, Vol. 1, No. 3, The Elementary and Secondary Education Act at Fifty and Beyond (December 2015), pp. 187-202
Solving Problems of Bureaucracy: Limits on Social Science
School Resources and Racial Equality
The price community control
Lemontey: An Early Critic of Industrialism
The Industrial Revolution profoundly altered the content and structure of modem European thought. To confirm this one need only reflect briefly on the main intellectual currents and concerns of the last century and one-half. The preoccupation with alienation, the growth of democratic and revolutionary ideas, the literature of massification, to mention a few obvious cases, are all intimately linked to changes in the character of productive activit…
Comte's Changing Sociology
The significange of Comte's sociology has in the past been attributed to his effort to formulate a scientific approach to social data. This view inadequate.While Comte's early sociological ideas represented an effort to create a predictive science of progress, as a result of his confrontation with the with the problems of industrialism and with trends in conservative social thought, his orientation changed. He sought to deal with social disorgani…
Lemontey: An Early Critic of Industrialism
The Industrial Revolution profoundly altered the content and structure of modem European thought. To confirm this one need only reflect briefly on the main intellectual currents and concerns of the last century and one-half. The preoccupation with alienation, the growth of democratic and revolutionary ideas, the literature of massification, to mention a few obvious cases, are all intimately linked to changes in the character of productive activit…
Teachers want what children need … or do they
Education and Race
WHATEVER ELSE written history may offer, it is bound to exhibit the preoccupations of its authors as faithfully as it records the experience of its subjects. As I understand the purpose of this symposium, it is an effort to sample such preoccupations-to produce a decent reflection of the concerns of the moment-unmediated by much effort to see how well they seem to fit evidence of the past. Although living, breathing historians are probably unused…
School Resources and Racial Equality
The price community control
The Vicomte de Bonald's Critique of Industrialism
Inequality: A Reassessment of the Effect of Family and Schooling in America
Segregation, desegregation, andbrown
Functions and Fantasies: Understanding Schools in Capitalist America
SCHOOLING IN CAPITALIST AMERICA (1) will make waves in the history of education, but it is only incidentally concerned with history. Rather, it is an effort to locate schooling in the social and economic context of capitalist society. The authors seek to offer a comprehensive account of the role schools have served in the American economic structure;they advance a critique of efforts to change or reform schools; and they suggest an alternative vi…
Solving Problems of Bureaucracy: Limits on Social Science
Usable Knowledge: Social Science and Social Problem Solving
The American Common School: A Divided Vision
Compromise and Diversity in the American High School
The Shopping Mall High School: Winners and Losers in the Educational Marketplace
A Revolution in One Classroom: The Case of Mrs. Oublier
This essay probes the relationship between instructional policy and teaching practice. In the mid 1980s, California State officials launched an ambitious effort to revise mathematics teaching and learning. The aim was to replace mechanical memorization with mathematical understanding. This essay considers one teacher’s response to the new policy. She sees herself as a success for the policy: she believes that she has revolutionized her mathematic…
Revolution in one classroom
This chapter probes the relationship between instructional policy and teaching practice. In the mid-1980s, California State officials launched an ambitious effort to revise mathematics teaching and learning. The aim was to replace mechanical memorization with mathematical understanding. This chapter considers one teacher's response to the new policy. She sees herself as a success for the policy: she believes that she has revolutionized her mathem…
Les nationalistes nord-africains face au sionisme (1929-1939)
En août 1929, la Palestine, alors sous mandat britannique, fut le théâtre de graves incidents entre Juifs et Arabes. Ces événements provoquèrent un regain de tension entre population arabe et minorité juive en Afrique du Nord. A la tête de chaque groupe ethnique, nous trouvions les nationalistes maghrébins, d'une part, et les militants sionistes de l'autre. La propagande sioniste, qui était le fait d'une faible minorité au sein des communautés ju…
What Is the System in Systemic Reform
policy. State and federal policy is not the only way to pursue improved instruction-The Coalition for Essential Schools, Accelerated Schools, and the New Standards Project all do so largely outside the framework of policy-but systemic reformers have viewed government as their chief vehicle. The leading examples of changed state and national policy include the California and Vermont reforms, Goals 2000, the NSF State Systemic Reform Initiative, an…
Reform by the Book: What Is—or Might Be—the Role of Curriculum Materials in Teacher Learning and Instructional Reform
Reform by the Book: What Is: Or Might Be: The Role of Curriculum Materials in Teacher Learning and Instructional Reform
Deborah Loewenberg Ball, David K. Cohen, Reform by the Book: What Is: Or Might Be: The Role of Curriculum Materials in Teacher Learning and Instructional Reform?, Educational Researcher, Vol. 25, No. 9 (Dec., 1996), pp. 6-8+14
Learning Policy: When State Education Reform Works
"Education reformers and policymakers argue that improved students' learning requires stronger academic standards, stiffer state tests, and accountability for students' scores. Yet these efforts seem not to be succeeding in many states. The authors of this important book argue that effective state reform depends on conditions that most reforms ignore: coherence in policy and practice, as well as opportunities for professional learning." "The book…
Resources, Instruction, and Research
Many researchers who study the relations between school resources and student achievement have worked from a causal model, which typically is implicit. In this model, some resource or set of resources is the causal variable and student achievement is the outcome. In a few recent, more nuanced versions, resource effects depend on intervening influences on their use. We argue for a model in which the key causal agents are situated in instruction; a…
Policy and Practice: The Dilemma
The relations between policy and practice embody a dilemma. Policies aim to solve problems, yet the key problem solvers are those who have the problem. Governments devise instruments to encourage implementation, but they help only if used well by those with the problem, whose capability is often weak. The realization of policy in practice thus depends on the fit between capabilities that support implementation and aims. The more aims outstrip cap…
The Ordeal of Equality: Did Federal Regulation Fix the Schools?
American schools have always been locally created and controlled. But ever since the Title I program in 1965 appropriated nearly one billion dollars for public schools, federal money and programs have been influencing every school in America. With incisive clarity and wit, David K. Cohen and Susan L. Moffitt argue that enormous gaps existed between policies and programs and the real-world practices that they attempted to change.
Political science (19 works) · Sociology (19 works) · Psychology (16 works) · Mathematics education (13 works) · Pedagogy (10 works) · School Choice and Performance (10 works) · Computer Science (9 works) · Law (9 works) · Teacher Education and Leadership Studies (9 works) · Economics (6 works)