Frederick M Hess
Biographic Data
| ID | 5741260 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Frederick M Hess |
| GIVEN NAMES | Frederick M |
| FAMILY NAME | Hess |
| SIGNATURE | HESS F M |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Virginia |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 27 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 87 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 27 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1997 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Parents’ rights, yes. But parent responsibilities, too
While there are plenty of people who decry the parents’ right push, viewing it as manufactured and mean-spirited, Frederick M. Hess and Michael Q. McShane think it has been a healthy and overdue development. Yet while parents have rights, they also have a responsibility to send students to school ready to learn. Schools are ultimately reliant on parents being active partners in preparing their children to be responsible students and citizens. Wit…
Rethinking school time
Efforts to improve education outcomes often involve lengthening the school day or the school year in hopes that spending more time in school will boost student learning. Yet, as Frederick Hess explains, U.S. students spend as much or more total time in school as their peers in other industrialized nations. What matters more than the amount of time is how that time is used. Although research into time usage at school is limited, existing studies h…
Bookshelf: Kappan authors on their favorite reads
Frederick M Hess recommends the book So Much Reform, So Little Change: The Persistence of Failure in Urban Schools by Charles M. Payne. Darius O. Johnson recommends Teaching on Days After: Educating for Equity in the Wake of Injustice by Alyssa Dunn
A Modest Proposal Regarding College Admissions
“But the Pension Fund Was Just Sitting There …”: The Politics of Teacher Retirement Plans
The tension at the heart of pension politics is the incentive to satisfy today's claimants in the here and now at the expense of long-term concerns. Teacher pensions, in particular, pose two challenges. The first is that political incentives invite irresponsible fiscal stewardship, as public officials make outsized short-term commitments to employees. The second is that incentives hinder modernization, as policy makers avoid the politically peril…
Revitalizing Teacher Education by Revisiting Our Assumptions About Teaching
The state of teaching and teacher education is the result of more than a century of compromises and adjustments demanded by the exigencies of another era. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the teaching profession was designed to match the rapid expansion of schooling. It relied on a captive pool of inexpensive, educated female labor and assumed little in the way of a professional knowledge base. Teacher preparation and development we…
Looking for Leadership: Assessing the Case for Mayoral Control of Urban School Systems
Replacing boards of education conceived during the Progressive Era with mayoral control has been a popular reform strategy in urban districts such as Boston, Chicago, and New York City. A thorough review of the extant research, however, shows little evidence regarding its impact on governance, management, school organization, or teaching and learning. Looking beyond the K–12 sector suggests that there is some reason to believe that appointed boar…
When Education Research Matters
The Predictable, but Unpredictably Personal, Politics of Teacher Licensure
The debates about teacher licensure have long reflected a grace, decorum, and rhetorical nu-ance more appropriate to the final weeks of a partisan political contest than to a substantive policy debate. Perplexingly, given the utterly unexceptional nature of the politics of the issue, the debate has turned into an often venomous dispute focused largely on the intricacies of data interpretation. The clash between those who would defend licensure an…
Who Chooses Experience? Examining the Use of Veteran Staff by House Freshmen
Scholars have long recognized the important role congressional staff play in promoting the effectiveness of their employers. This is especially true for new representatives, who usually have few other resources. This article examines the hiring of experienced staff by House freshmen and tests multiple hypotheses for variation in this recruitment. The data include 2,760 staff members hired by 210 freshmen who entered the House between 1981 and 199…
Teachers’ Attitudes and the Success of School Choice
The 1990s witnessed growing attention to the adoption of choice‐based school reforms, particularly charter schooling and school vouchers. Although researchers have approached the school choice debate from theoretical, normative, and empirical directions, little attention has been paid to examining how teachers view school choice or what factors shape their attitudes. This oversight is significant because teachers can impact the success of school …
Contestation versus Replacement: Republican Party Gains in Southern State Legislative Elections
This study tests two theories of how support for Republican candidates has increased in Southern state legislative elections between 1968 and 1988. The first, called the rising tide hypothesis, asks how much of the Republican gains were due to a growing number of Southern Republican voters and, therefore, to growing support for Republican candidates over Democratic incumbents in general elections. The second, the replacement hypothesis, theorizes…
Technocracies, Bureaucracies, or Responsive Polities? Urban School Systems and the Politics of School Violence Prevention
Objective. Two tacks are implicit in the seminal Chubb and Moe (1990) argument that education bureaucracies tend to be rigidified by democratic conflict. One emphasizes the vulnerability of urban systems to organized interests and community pressures; the other argues that urban systems are unresponsive and ossified bureaucracies. This debate contrasts with traditional assumptions of apolitical “professionalism.” The predictive power of these the…
The Passage of Charter Legislation in Virginia: The Role of Resistance, Party, and Regional Tension
The widespread success of charter legislation has fostered a perception that charter schooling is apolitical and has clouded our understanding of the politics of the issue. In a case study of Virginia, we suggest that three important political variables have been largely overlooked to date. The “weak” form of Virginia's charter legislation can be attributed in large part to the schism between Northern Virginia's educationally privileged communiti…
The Market Approach to Education: An Analysis of America's First Voucher Program . John F. Witte Policy Entrepreneurs and School Choice . Michael Mintrom
School Quality, Race, and Class Revisited: A Reply to Saporito, Yancey, and Louis
A Shrinking “Digital Divide”? The Provision of Classroom Computers across Urban School Systems
Objective . To determine the extent of the urban school “digital divide”—the varying provision of computer technology to students of different races and classes—and whether it has changed in the 1990s. Methods . Ordinary least squares and logit regression analysis is conducted on the 1995 Council of Urban Boards of Education survey, encompassing 72 urban school districts. Results . Districts with a higher percentage of African American students p…
Whaddya Mean you Want to Close My School: The Politics of Regulatory Accountability in Charter Schooling
Quality, Race, and the Urban Education Marketplace
A key issue in urban education policy is the potential impact of market-based reforms. Using a data set encompassing 50 urban school systems, the authors investigate the market reform hypothesis by assessing the impact of perceived school performance, race, and religion on private school enrollment. Previous work in this vein has relied on statewide data, generating findings that may not generalize to the urban districts at the center of the scho…
Coping With Competition: The impact of Charter Schooling on Public School Outreach in Arizona
Advocates of market‐based education reform hypothesize that competition will cause traditional public schools to increase outreach efforts as they seek to market themselves. Advocates hope such efforts will result in more information on school activities and performance and thereby enhance accountability. We examine the effect of charter school competition on outreach efforts by a sample of 98 Arizona district schools, finding that charter compet…
Spinning wheels: The Politics of Urban School Reform
Almost everyone agrees that America's urban schools are a mess. But while this agreement has fostered widespread support for aggressive reform, Frederick Hess argues that much of what ails urban education is actually the result of continuous or fragmentary reform. Hess argues that policymakers have misallocated resources by pursuing the "right" structure or the "best" pedagogy while paying insufficient attention to the more mundane - and more imp…
Reinventing public education
Computer-Assisted Learning in Urban Classrooms: The Impact of Politics, Race, and Class
This article uses data from 54 urban school districts to test hypotheses explaining the integration of computer technology into the classroom. Surprisingly, the authors find no statistically significant effects of funding on the provision of computer-assisted learning. However, median family income actually has a negative effect on the percentage of urban district students receiving computer-assisted classroom learning. Suggesting that equity is …
Bringing the social sciences alive: 10 Simulations for History, Economics, Government, and Geography
A handy guide to the use of simulations in the classroom, this material provides important directions, background content, and reproducible materials for ten ready-to-use simulations that will engage your students in a variety of performance-related activities. An extensive introduction provides both the novice and the experienced teacher with guidelines for assessment, as well as discussions on designing and creating unique simulations and modif…
Politics and Sex-Related Programs in Urban Schooling
Very little is known about why urban school districts choose to enact sex-related education and health programs. In this article, the authors test a model explaining such programs using a 1992 Council of Urban Boards of Education survey. They find that the likelihood a school district will offer such programs is significantly affected by perceived local support for the programs, the percentage of women on the school board, the local Hispanic popu…
Minority Teachers, Minority Students, and College Matriculation: A New Look at the Role‐Modeling Hypothesis
Policy Studies JournalVolume 25, Issue 2 p. 235-248 Minority Teachers, Minority Students, and College Matriculation: a New Look at the Role-Modeling Hypothesis Frederick M. Hess, Frederick M. Hess Frederick M. Hess is director of the Center for Educational Policy in the Curry School of Education, an assistant professor of education, and an assistant professor (by courtesty) of government at the University of Virginia.Search for more papers by thi…
Spinning wheels: The Politics of Urban School Reform
Almost everyone agrees that America's urban schools are a mess. But while this agreement has fostered widespread support for aggressive reform, Frederick Hess argues that much of what ails urban education is actually the result of continuous or fragmentary reform. Hess argues that policymakers have misallocated resources by pursuing the "right" structure or the "best" pedagogy while paying insufficient attention to the more mundane - and more imp…
Who Chooses Experience? Examining the Use of Veteran Staff by House Freshmen
Scholars have long recognized the important role congressional staff play in promoting the effectiveness of their employers. This is especially true for new representatives, who usually have few other resources. This article examines the hiring of experienced staff by House freshmen and tests multiple hypotheses for variation in this recruitment. The data include 2,760 staff members hired by 210 freshmen who entered the House between 1981 and 199…
Whaddya Mean you Want to Close My School: The Politics of Regulatory Accountability in Charter Schooling
Quality, Race, and the Urban Education Marketplace
A key issue in urban education policy is the potential impact of market-based reforms. Using a data set encompassing 50 urban school systems, the authors investigate the market reform hypothesis by assessing the impact of perceived school performance, race, and religion on private school enrollment. Previous work in this vein has relied on statewide data, generating findings that may not generalize to the urban districts at the center of the scho…
Teachers’ Attitudes and the Success of School Choice
The 1990s witnessed growing attention to the adoption of choice‐based school reforms, particularly charter schooling and school vouchers. Although researchers have approached the school choice debate from theoretical, normative, and empirical directions, little attention has been paid to examining how teachers view school choice or what factors shape their attitudes. This oversight is significant because teachers can impact the success of school …
Coping With Competition: The impact of Charter Schooling on Public School Outreach in Arizona
Advocates of market‐based education reform hypothesize that competition will cause traditional public schools to increase outreach efforts as they seek to market themselves. Advocates hope such efforts will result in more information on school activities and performance and thereby enhance accountability. We examine the effect of charter school competition on outreach efforts by a sample of 98 Arizona district schools, finding that charter compet…
A Political Explanation of Policy Selection: The Case of Urban School Reform
Amid the torrent of reform activity in urban school systems, some proposals fare better than others. The traditional technocratic presumption is that reforms are chosen for their educational merit. I suggest that, to the contrary, institutional incentives encourage urban policymakers to emphasize symbolic appeal. Data from a 1995 study of 57 urban districts are used to compare the fate of two school reforms. The more symbolically attractive refor…
The Predictable, but Unpredictably Personal, Politics of Teacher Licensure
The debates about teacher licensure have long reflected a grace, decorum, and rhetorical nu-ance more appropriate to the final weeks of a partisan political contest than to a substantive policy debate. Perplexingly, given the utterly unexceptional nature of the politics of the issue, the debate has turned into an often venomous dispute focused largely on the intricacies of data interpretation. The clash between those who would defend licensure an…
A Shrinking “Digital Divide”? The Provision of Classroom Computers across Urban School Systems
Objective . To determine the extent of the urban school “digital divide”—the varying provision of computer technology to students of different races and classes—and whether it has changed in the 1990s. Methods . Ordinary least squares and logit regression analysis is conducted on the 1995 Council of Urban Boards of Education survey, encompassing 72 urban school districts. Results . Districts with a higher percentage of African American students p…
A Modest Proposal Regarding College Admissions
Revitalizing Teacher Education by Revisiting Our Assumptions About Teaching
The state of teaching and teacher education is the result of more than a century of compromises and adjustments demanded by the exigencies of another era. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the teaching profession was designed to match the rapid expansion of schooling. It relied on a captive pool of inexpensive, educated female labor and assumed little in the way of a professional knowledge base. Teacher preparation and development we…
Looking for Leadership: Assessing the Case for Mayoral Control of Urban School Systems
Replacing boards of education conceived during the Progressive Era with mayoral control has been a popular reform strategy in urban districts such as Boston, Chicago, and New York City. A thorough review of the extant research, however, shows little evidence regarding its impact on governance, management, school organization, or teaching and learning. Looking beyond the K–12 sector suggests that there is some reason to believe that appointed boar…
Politics and Sex-Related Programs in Urban Schooling
Very little is known about why urban school districts choose to enact sex-related education and health programs. In this article, the authors test a model explaining such programs using a 1992 Council of Urban Boards of Education survey. They find that the likelihood a school district will offer such programs is significantly affected by perceived local support for the programs, the percentage of women on the school board, the local Hispanic popu…
Technocracies, Bureaucracies, or Responsive Polities? Urban School Systems and the Politics of School Violence Prevention
Objective. Two tacks are implicit in the seminal Chubb and Moe (1990) argument that education bureaucracies tend to be rigidified by democratic conflict. One emphasizes the vulnerability of urban systems to organized interests and community pressures; the other argues that urban systems are unresponsive and ossified bureaucracies. This debate contrasts with traditional assumptions of apolitical “professionalism.” The predictive power of these the…
Computer-Assisted Learning in Urban Classrooms: The Impact of Politics, Race, and Class
This article uses data from 54 urban school districts to test hypotheses explaining the integration of computer technology into the classroom. Surprisingly, the authors find no statistically significant effects of funding on the provision of computer-assisted learning. However, median family income actually has a negative effect on the percentage of urban district students receiving computer-assisted classroom learning. Suggesting that equity is …
Minority Teachers, Minority Students, and College Matriculation: A New Look at the Role‐Modeling Hypothesis
Policy Studies JournalVolume 25, Issue 2 p. 235-248 Minority Teachers, Minority Students, and College Matriculation: a New Look at the Role-Modeling Hypothesis Frederick M. Hess, Frederick M. Hess Frederick M. Hess is director of the Center for Educational Policy in the Curry School of Education, an assistant professor of education, and an assistant professor (by courtesty) of government at the University of Virginia.Search for more papers by thi…
Spinning wheels: The Politics of Urban School Reform
Almost everyone agrees that America's urban schools are a mess. But while this agreement has fostered widespread support for aggressive reform, Frederick Hess argues that much of what ails urban education is actually the result of continuous or fragmentary reform. Hess argues that policymakers have misallocated resources by pursuing the "right" structure or the "best" pedagogy while paying insufficient attention to the more mundane - and more imp…
Reinventing public education
Computer-Assisted Learning in Urban Classrooms: The Impact of Politics, Race, and Class
This article uses data from 54 urban school districts to test hypotheses explaining the integration of computer technology into the classroom. Surprisingly, the authors find no statistically significant effects of funding on the provision of computer-assisted learning. However, median family income actually has a negative effect on the percentage of urban district students receiving computer-assisted classroom learning. Suggesting that equity is …
Bringing the social sciences alive: 10 Simulations for History, Economics, Government, and Geography
A handy guide to the use of simulations in the classroom, this material provides important directions, background content, and reproducible materials for ten ready-to-use simulations that will engage your students in a variety of performance-related activities. An extensive introduction provides both the novice and the experienced teacher with guidelines for assessment, as well as discussions on designing and creating unique simulations and modif…
Politics and Sex-Related Programs in Urban Schooling
Very little is known about why urban school districts choose to enact sex-related education and health programs. In this article, the authors test a model explaining such programs using a 1992 Council of Urban Boards of Education survey. They find that the likelihood a school district will offer such programs is significantly affected by perceived local support for the programs, the percentage of women on the school board, the local Hispanic popu…
A Political Explanation of Policy Selection: The Case of Urban School Reform
Amid the torrent of reform activity in urban school systems, some proposals fare better than others. The traditional technocratic presumption is that reforms are chosen for their educational merit. I suggest that, to the contrary, institutional incentives encourage urban policymakers to emphasize symbolic appeal. Data from a 1995 study of 57 urban districts are used to compare the fate of two school reforms. The more symbolically attractive refor…
School Quality, Race, and Class Revisited: A Reply to Saporito, Yancey, and Louis
A Shrinking “Digital Divide”? The Provision of Classroom Computers across Urban School Systems
Objective . To determine the extent of the urban school “digital divide”—the varying provision of computer technology to students of different races and classes—and whether it has changed in the 1990s. Methods . Ordinary least squares and logit regression analysis is conducted on the 1995 Council of Urban Boards of Education survey, encompassing 72 urban school districts. Results . Districts with a higher percentage of African American students p…
Whaddya Mean you Want to Close My School: The Politics of Regulatory Accountability in Charter Schooling
Quality, Race, and the Urban Education Marketplace
A key issue in urban education policy is the potential impact of market-based reforms. Using a data set encompassing 50 urban school systems, the authors investigate the market reform hypothesis by assessing the impact of perceived school performance, race, and religion on private school enrollment. Previous work in this vein has relied on statewide data, generating findings that may not generalize to the urban districts at the center of the scho…
Coping With Competition: The impact of Charter Schooling on Public School Outreach in Arizona
Advocates of market‐based education reform hypothesize that competition will cause traditional public schools to increase outreach efforts as they seek to market themselves. Advocates hope such efforts will result in more information on school activities and performance and thereby enhance accountability. We examine the effect of charter school competition on outreach efforts by a sample of 98 Arizona district schools, finding that charter compet…
The Passage of Charter Legislation in Virginia: The Role of Resistance, Party, and Regional Tension
The widespread success of charter legislation has fostered a perception that charter schooling is apolitical and has clouded our understanding of the politics of the issue. In a case study of Virginia, we suggest that three important political variables have been largely overlooked to date. The “weak” form of Virginia's charter legislation can be attributed in large part to the schism between Northern Virginia's educationally privileged communiti…
The Market Approach to Education: An Analysis of America's First Voucher Program . John F. Witte Policy Entrepreneurs and School Choice . Michael Mintrom
Contestation versus Replacement: Republican Party Gains in Southern State Legislative Elections
This study tests two theories of how support for Republican candidates has increased in Southern state legislative elections between 1968 and 1988. The first, called the rising tide hypothesis, asks how much of the Republican gains were due to a growing number of Southern Republican voters and, therefore, to growing support for Republican candidates over Democratic incumbents in general elections. The second, the replacement hypothesis, theorizes…
Technocracies, Bureaucracies, or Responsive Polities? Urban School Systems and the Politics of School Violence Prevention
Objective. Two tacks are implicit in the seminal Chubb and Moe (1990) argument that education bureaucracies tend to be rigidified by democratic conflict. One emphasizes the vulnerability of urban systems to organized interests and community pressures; the other argues that urban systems are unresponsive and ossified bureaucracies. This debate contrasts with traditional assumptions of apolitical “professionalism.” The predictive power of these the…
Who Chooses Experience? Examining the Use of Veteran Staff by House Freshmen
Scholars have long recognized the important role congressional staff play in promoting the effectiveness of their employers. This is especially true for new representatives, who usually have few other resources. This article examines the hiring of experienced staff by House freshmen and tests multiple hypotheses for variation in this recruitment. The data include 2,760 staff members hired by 210 freshmen who entered the House between 1981 and 199…
Teachers’ Attitudes and the Success of School Choice
The 1990s witnessed growing attention to the adoption of choice‐based school reforms, particularly charter schooling and school vouchers. Although researchers have approached the school choice debate from theoretical, normative, and empirical directions, little attention has been paid to examining how teachers view school choice or what factors shape their attitudes. This oversight is significant because teachers can impact the success of school …
The Predictable, but Unpredictably Personal, Politics of Teacher Licensure
The debates about teacher licensure have long reflected a grace, decorum, and rhetorical nu-ance more appropriate to the final weeks of a partisan political contest than to a substantive policy debate. Perplexingly, given the utterly unexceptional nature of the politics of the issue, the debate has turned into an often venomous dispute focused largely on the intricacies of data interpretation. The clash between those who would defend licensure an…
Looking for Leadership: Assessing the Case for Mayoral Control of Urban School Systems
Replacing boards of education conceived during the Progressive Era with mayoral control has been a popular reform strategy in urban districts such as Boston, Chicago, and New York City. A thorough review of the extant research, however, shows little evidence regarding its impact on governance, management, school organization, or teaching and learning. Looking beyond the K–12 sector suggests that there is some reason to believe that appointed boar…
When Education Research Matters
Revitalizing Teacher Education by Revisiting Our Assumptions About Teaching
The state of teaching and teacher education is the result of more than a century of compromises and adjustments demanded by the exigencies of another era. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the teaching profession was designed to match the rapid expansion of schooling. It relied on a captive pool of inexpensive, educated female labor and assumed little in the way of a professional knowledge base. Teacher preparation and development we…
“But the Pension Fund Was Just Sitting There …”: The Politics of Teacher Retirement Plans
The tension at the heart of pension politics is the incentive to satisfy today's claimants in the here and now at the expense of long-term concerns. Teacher pensions, in particular, pose two challenges. The first is that political incentives invite irresponsible fiscal stewardship, as public officials make outsized short-term commitments to employees. The second is that incentives hinder modernization, as policy makers avoid the politically peril…
A Modest Proposal Regarding College Admissions
Rethinking school time
Efforts to improve education outcomes often involve lengthening the school day or the school year in hopes that spending more time in school will boost student learning. Yet, as Frederick Hess explains, U.S. students spend as much or more total time in school as their peers in other industrialized nations. What matters more than the amount of time is how that time is used. Although research into time usage at school is limited, existing studies h…
Political science (22 works) · School Choice and Performance (16 works) · Sociology (14 works) · Economics (13 works) · Law (13 works) · Psychology (12 works) · Politics (11 works) · Public Administration (11 works) · Pedagogy (9 works) · Public relations (8 works)