First lady Laura Bush is scheduled to be on hand in Washington this week at an event kicking off a new journal that aims to bridge the gap between research and policy in education.
The editors of Education Matters promise their publication will “steer a steady course, presenting the facts as best can be determined, giving voice (without fear or favor) to worthy research, sound ideas, and responsible arguments.”
The journal’s benefactors are dominated by groups with a conservative tilt. Its publisher is the Hoover Institution, a think tank at Stanford University. Other sponsors are the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation in Washington, Harvard University’s Program on Education Policy and Governance, and the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research in New York City.
Whatever the philosophy of its sponsors, Education Matters’ inaugural issue features an article by Nancy and Theodore R. Sizer, education thinkers well- known for their progressive ideas, as well as articles by more conservative scholars.
“There’s no point in doing this if it’s not regarded as a serious, fact-based magazine—one that the policy community as a whole will find interest in,” said Paul E. Peterson, the Harvard government professor who serves as the journal’s editor in chief. Mr. Peterson is best known to educators for his studies pointing to academic gains among children in school choice programs.
One-year subscriptions to the quarterly journal are $20. The journal can also be viewed at www.edmatters.org.
—Debra Viadero
