<p>Left-Wing Bias in Education Schools Is Overstated by Conservative Critics, 2 Reports Suggest
By JENNIFER JACOBSON
Washington
Conservatives' fear of left-wing bias in schools of education is overblown -- at least in programs of educational administration -- according to two reports on training programs for school principals that the American Enterprise Institute released here on Wednesday.
The reports, "Learning to Lead? What Gets Taught in Principal-Preparation Programs" and "Textbook Leadership? An Analysis of Leading Books Used in Principal Preparation," were published by Harvard University's Program on Education Policy and Governance and are available on its Web site.
Frederick M. Hess, director of education-policy studies at the institute, and Andrew P. Kelly, a researcher there, conducted the studies on which the reports are based. The reports' chief finding is that such programs do a poor job of preparing principals to manage their teachers and to hold them accountable.
But given the polarized political climate on many college campuses, the finding on ideological bias, or lack thereof, was one of the reports' more interesting conclusions. It's particularly interesting because the institute is a bastion of conservative thinking on public-policy issues.
In the study that produced "Learning to Lead," Mr. Hess and Mr. Kelly analyzed a national cross section of 31 principal-preparation programs and reviewed more than 200 course syllabi, covering almost 2,500 weeks of courses. They found that only about 12 percent of the course weeks focused on exposing principal candidates to different educational and pedagogical philosophies, to debates about the nature and purpose of public schooling, and to examinations of the racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic context of education.
Mr. Hess and Mr. Kelly did find, however, that instruction devoted to such topics was biased, with 65 percent of those course weeks qualifying as left-leaning, 35 percent as neutral, and less than 1 percent as right-leaning.
According to the report, Mr. Hess and Mr. Kelly labeled left-leaning course weeks as those that advocated concepts such as social justice and multiculturalism, focused on inequality and racial discrimination, emphasized notions of "silenced voices and child-centered instruction," or criticized testing and school-choice reform.
Right-leaning course weeks were those that criticized ideas of social justice and multiculturalism, viewed focusing on inequality or discrimination as engaging in "victimhood," advocated phonics or "back-to-basics instruction," or framed discussions of testing or school-choice reform in a positive light.
Some course weeks identified as left-leaning included "The role of the curriculum in legitimating social inequality" and "What role(s) do race and social class play in school reform? Is social Darwinism a useful reform concept?"
Course weeks labeled as balanced or neutral included "Are unions good or bad for public education? What does the evidence say?" and "What should schools teach? Phonics vs. whole language; multicultural education/teaching for diversity."
The single course week identified as right-leaning -- "The state and local politics of education reform" -- was so dubbed because the primary reading was by a well-known conservative scholar.
"Interestingly, many of the traditional bogeymen flagged by education schools were not much in evidence," the report says. "For instance, the words 'diversity' and 'diverse' and 'multiculturalism' and 'multicultural' appeared in only 3 percent of all course weeks."
In their other report, "Textbook Leadership," Mr. Hess and Mr. Kelly found that left-leaning bias in the textbooks assigned was largely absent. The word "diversity" appeared just 4.3 times per 100 pages of text, and "multicultural" appeared less than once per 100 pages. </p>
<p>Copyright © 2005 by The Chronicle of Higher Education</p>
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