Measuring Up: What Educational Testing Really Tells Us

By Daniel Koretz
Harvard University Press

Educational testing is ubiquitous in America, and its importance is hard to overstate writes the author, a Harvard professor of education. Yet test scores, especially in the case of high stakes testing, are widely misunderstood and misused—with serious consequences, he maintains. Although they often purport to measure what students have learned, achievement tests are but incomplete assessments of a subset of educational goals: small samples of behavior used to estimate students’ mastery of very large areas of knowledge and skill. This book, inspired by a popular course the author teaches to students with limited mathematics background, covers a range of relevant topics such as what factors influence test scores, validity, inflated test scores and testing of students with special needs. The final chapter, “Sensible Uses of Tests,” provides valuable guidelines for avoiding many testing pitfalls.

The Fall and Rise of the Islamic State

By Noah Feldman
Princeton University Press

The Islamic state that began with the Prophet Muhammad and ended with the Ottoman Empire is again on the rise, according to author Noah Feldman, a professor at Harvard Law School and adjunct senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. But will today’s new Islamic states succeed over time? Feldman says this question can be addressed only by examining why the first Islamic state fell and what major difficulties new states will confront. Their overall challenge, he contends, is the need to establish legal systems justified by law (shari’a, the divine law that guided the Islamic state for centuries) and governed through it. This law cannot be implemented in a vacuum, he writes, and to achieve legitimacy, a state needs to establish effective human institutions, “recreating a state that combines the best of the old while coming to terms with the new.”

Electronic Elections: The Perils and Promises of Digital Democracy

by R. Michael Alvarez and Thad E. Hall
Princeton University Press

Electronic voting is controversial. Many people object to the new technology because they feel it is vulnerable to fraud; others support e-voting in the belief that it is easier and more accurate. The authors, Alvarez, a professor political science at the California Institute of Technology, and Hall, assistant professor of political science at the University of Utah, rely on a wealth of recent data to assess the security risks of electronic voting and its impact on voter participation. They offer ten recommendations—from serious funding and systematic data collection to equitable standards and recognition of the realities of today’s elections— intended to promote system-wide reform, and they stress the need for a rational, science-based effort to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of all voting systems to improve the act of voting for all Americans.

Engaging Privacy and Information Technology in a Digital Age

James Waldo, Herbert S. Lin and Lynette I. Millett, editors
The Natonal Academies Press

National Research Council:

Committee on Privacy in the Information Age,
Computer Science and Telecommunications Board
Division on Engineering and Physical Sciences

The term “privacy” has many meanings today, which vary according to situation, intention, environment and technology, to name a few key factors. Whatever the context, privacy is a matter of great concern in the United States and globally, as the Internet provides seemingly infinite opportunities for collecting, saving, sharing, and using sensitive information. Featuring contributions by private and public sector experts, this in-depth exploration of the intersection of privacy and information technology explores how threats to privacy are evolving, suggests effective means of protection and looks at society’s responsibility to balance privacy risks with the competing interests of individuals, businesses and government.

Building States to Build Peace

edited by Charles T. Call with Vanessa Wyeth
Lynne Reinner Publishers

Consolidating peace is especially urgent in today’s world, writes editor Charles T. Call, and this book, a project of the International Peace Institute, aims to show how statebuilding can promote that endeavor. It sets out to establish priority functions corresponding to the core responsibilities of the state, which are explained in a series of thematic chapters on security, legitimacy, economic policymaking, justice and the rule of law. These chapters are followed by detailed case studies that recount a range of statebuilding efforts— in Somalia, Palestine, Bosnia, East Timor, Afghanistan and Liberia— where international actors played a critical role in the process of securing peace. Call is assistant professor of international peace and conflict resolution at American University, and the book’s contributors are well known advisors and policymakers with field experience in war-torn societies who bring diverse perspectives to bear on their analyses.

Just Schools: Pursuing Equality in Societies of Difference

edited by Marta Minow, Richard A. Shweder and Hazel Markus
Russell Sage Foundation

Public schools may be repositories of hope – the hope of parents, pupils, teachers and of entire generations – but they are also projects of justice, imperfect institutions dependent on limited resources and hard pressed to solve all the inequities of our communities. This book considers the limited means schools in a multicultural society have for addressing the issue of justice through policies and practices. The contributors, legal scholars, educators and social scientists, compare myriad ways the quest for justice has been conducted in classrooms nationwide, exploring the tension between social and political efforts to advance equality for all, and support for pluralism and multiculturalism. They provide real-life examples of highly complex solutions and consequences and they demonstrate how equality and difference both have a place in the struggle to achieve just schools.

Inside the Presidential Debates: Their Improbable Past and Promising Future

By Newton N. Minow and Craig L. LaMay
Foreword by Vartan Gregorian
The University of Chicago Press

“How can televised presidential debates help to fortify our ideals and continue to uplift our democracy?” asks Carnegie Corporation president Vartan Gregorian in the foreword to this book. “How can the debates better serve American voters in the digital age? …There is no one more qualified to address these questions than Newton Minow.”

Fifty years ago, Minow, then chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, memorably termed television a “vast wasteland.” His career since then has been largely dedicated to reforming TV, while his most outstanding contribution has been to facilitate televised presidential debates. Currently serving as vice chair of the Commission on Presidential Debates (which he helped create), he offers readers an in-depth look into the history of the debates and the ongoing battles that determine who participates and under what circumstances. Minow and his collaborator Craig LaMay, associate professor at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, set out to prove that the debates still stand as one of the great accomplishments of modern American electoral politics, and the authors offer ideas for making sure these events retain their importance in a world of new media.

Russia and Globalization: Identity, Security and Society in an Era of Change

Edited by Douglas W. Blum
Woodrow Wilson Center Press

Globalization inexorably affects Russian society—its economic, political, demographic and cultural interests. Not a straightforward process with uniform effects throughout the world, globalization is mediated by factors peculiar to Russia, writes editor Douglas W. Blum, a political science professor at Providence College. In this book, the culmination of a workshop sponsored by the Kennan Institute of the Woodrow Wilson Center and the ISE Center in Russia, sixteen international scholars analyze aspects of Russian domestic politics and foreign policy in response to global pressures. Their essays on such topics as the demographic crisis, educational transformation, the defense industry and human rights, emphasize that, while Russia and the world have become increasingly intertwined, Russia’s attitude toward globalization remains complicated and ambivalent.

Supporting Literacy Across the Sunshine State: A Study of Florida Middle School Reading Coaches

by Julie A. Marsh, Jennifer Sloan McCombs, J. R. Lockwood, Francisco Martorell, Daniel Gershwin, Scott Naftel, Vi-Nhuan Le, Molly Shea, Heather Barney, Al Crego
Rand Education

Despite progress they may have made in reading achievement, many children don’t go from basic decoding skills to fluency and comprehension as they move from primary to higher grades. To address this problem, policymakers recommend reading coaches — master teachers who offer ongoing on-site instructional support for teachers — to improve teachers' practice and students' literacy skills. Researchers at Rand evaluated the middle school reading coach program in Florida to answer several key questions: How is the program there being implemented? What is the impact of coaching on students' achievement? What features of reading coach models and practices have better outcomes than others? The book concludes with policy recommendations aimed at attaining high-quality coaches and facilitating their work across content areas.

The Cost of Counterterrorism: Power Politics and Liberty

by Laura K. Donohue
Cambridge University Press

The prevalent attitude to counterterrorist law can be summed up in a single question: What is the tradeoff between security and freedom? But this query glosses over the complex nature of both security and freedom, while it downplays the fact that some rights are fundamental to a liberal democracy and cannot be relinquished. Equally important is the way adoption of such a simplistic either/or framework increases executive power and alters the relationships among the branches of government, with broad social, political and economic effects. In the aftermath of a terrorist attack political stakes are high, according to author Laura Donohue, a Fellow at the Constitutional Law Center at Stanford Law School and 2001 Carnegie Scholar. Legislators often grant the executive branch broader authority without thorough debate, while the judiciary finds its role severely restricted. This book re-calculates the cost of counterterrorist law to both the United Kingdom and the United States, arguing that the damage caused is significantly greater than it first appears.

The End of Inequality: One Person, One Vote and the Transformation of American Politics

by Stephen Ansolabehere and James M. Snyder Jr.
W.W. Norton & Company

In the early 1960s, the Supreme Court case of Baker v. Carr led to the state of Tennessee redrawing its district boundaries, with the result that all districts had equal populations and, therefore, equal representation. This decision, say the authors (who are both political science professors at Massachusetts Institute of Technology) set off a national reapportionment revolution that ultimately restored the natural balance between the political parties and among competing ideologies and interests. Thus began a new age in American politics, an “age of fairness,” in which “equality of opportunity in our politics, as well as our society, became the new American ethos and one person, one vote its defining principle.” This book merges the historical and legal facts with expert political analysis, showing how the case of Baker v. Carr reshaped the most basic feature of practical politics—who wins and who loses.

Greater than the Sum of its Parts

Assessing “Whole of Government” Approaches to Fragile States
By Stewart Patrick and Kaysie Brown
International Peace Academy 2007

“Fragile states represent both the crux of today’s development challenge and an increasing source of potential threats to global security,” say authors Stewart Patrick and Kaysie Brown, who are both affiliated with the Center for Global Development. In their independent, comparative assessment of donor governments’ efforts to prevent state failure and promote peace and recovery in war-torn states, they show how painfully difficult this challenge can be. The donor community has lately come to realize that they must not only do things differently, but they must do different things, they point out. As a result, individual governments now strive to integrate their priorities and policies into a “whole of government approach,” simultaneously addressing goals of poverty alleviation, accountable governance, stability and security. Analyzing the recent experiences of seven leading donors—the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Australia, Germany, France and Sweden—Greater than the Sum of its Parts underscores the tensions inherent in the effort to define goals, coordinate mechanisms and mobilize adequate resources more strategically. While noting the shortcomings of existing approaches, the authors also call attention to promising developments and offer useful suggestions for bridging gaps among development, defense and diplomatic communities.

Falling Behind: International Scrutiny of the Peaceful Atom

Henry D. Sokolski, Editor
Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College

Are the nuclear safeguards of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) effectively blocking proliferation? Is the Agency able to achieve its nuclear material accountancy mission and find a balance between expanding the use of nuclear energy while making sure it does not turn into bombs? These critical questions currently face the United States and other like-minded nations interested in nuclear nonproliferation, as the potential worldwide expansion of nuclear power makes the IAEA’s pledge to keep these programs peaceful increasingly difficult to keep. This timely book presents the conclusions of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, which commissioned numerous studies on the effectiveness of the safeguard system then held a series of expert conferences aimed at analyzing its problems and proposing improvements. Observing that the Agency was already falling behind on its accountancy mission, the Center has compiled a series of critical steps (based on the studies, discussed in detail here) to be taken in the next two to five years—from drawing a clearer distinction between what can and cannot be safeguarded, to establishing default actions against noncompliance.

The Paradox of a Global USA

Edited by Bruce Mazlish, Nayan Chanda and Kenneth Weisbrode
Stanford University Press

Globalization in the United States is a paradox because, while it is arguably the most powerful actor on the global stage, the U.S. often seems determined not to live in the world it is helping to create. So writes Bruce Mazlish, MIT professor of history, emeritus, in the discussion of American exceptionalism that introduces this wide-ranging collection of essays examining a global America. With contributions from a distinguished group of scholars representing such fields as political science, international relations, sociology and media studies, the book tackles the subject within several distinct areas: the relationship between globalization and

What is at issue is not whether we should support or oppose globalization but how we should respond to it as a reality, how we should manage it and its consequences.
— from the Foreword by Strobe Talbot

Americanization; present U.S. policy and cultural perspectives (including religion and media) and the impact of the military and of terrorism. While disagreements and differing emphases can be found throughout, the authors share a basic realization that the United States’ position of power makes its ability to deal with globalization of greater-than-ordinary importance, even though its struggles are those all countries of the present global epoch must endure.

The Amputated Memory

by Werewere Liking; translated by Marjolijn de Jager
The Feminist Press

Combining prose and poetry, this original “song novel” tells the coming-of-age story of a girl from Cameroon who, despite being victimized by her family and her culture, finds a way to reclaim her sense of self. Winner of the Noma Award for an outstanding book published in Africa, The Amputated Memory was recognized as “a deeply felt presentation of the female condition in Africa; and a celebration of women as the country's memory." Author Werewere Liking was born in Cameroon in 1978 and for the past 30 years has lived in the Ivory Coast, where she established the Village Ki-Yi, a self-supporting center for the performing and fine arts. She is a singer, dancer, actor, playwright, songwriter and author of two earlier books.

The Swing Voter in American Politics

William G. Mayer, Editor
Brookings Institution Press

Who are swing voters and why do candidates court them, consultants target them and pundits speculate endlessly about which way they’ll lean? Learning more about swing voters “contributes something new and valuable to election studies, by reminding us that in the context of an election campaign, not all voters are equal, and that voters will receive attention according to their expected payoff,” claims editor William G. Mayer, associate professor of political science at Northeastern University. Using a wealth of sources, including data from American National Election Studies along with well established national polls and surveys, Mayer and his cadre of political scientists and pollsters track the traits and habits of swing voters through six decades of national and local elections. They investigate party switchers, analyze decision-making styles, search for trends and common factors among the undecided and the unpersuadable and evaluate whether swing votes do actually decide elections. Along the way they find intriguing answers to key questions on voter identity, beliefs and behavior from which they paint an unprecedented picture of this influential political group.

From Mercenaries to Market: The Rise and Regulation of Private Military Companies

Edited by Simon Chesterman and Chia Lehnardt
Oxford University Press

Private military companies are commercial firms offering military services ranging from combat and military training and advice to logistical support. Credited with turning around conflict in Sierra Leone and shifting the balance of power in the Balkans, these firms play an increasingly important role in armed conflicts, UN peace operations and in providing security for unstable states. Iraq, for instance, has seen tens of thousands of private contractors on the ground. The growing use of private military companies and their transition from traditional mercenaries to market-driven, state-sanctioned entities raises potentially troubling questions about the interrelationship of regulation and market forces. This book, which includes contributions from top legal and foreign policy experts, focuses on issues of governance, analyzing the current legal framework and the needs and possibilities for stricter regulation in the years ahead. Four key questions are addressed: Why and how is regulation now a challenging issue? What problems have led to a call for regulation: What regulatory norms and institutions currently exist and how effective are they? What is the market’s role in regulation? In their conclusion, the editors predict a growing market for such private operators and recommend a pragmatic approach to governance that draws on international law, while balancing commercial and public interests, voluntary and imposed regulation. “In the absence of such a regime,” they warn, “the marketplace of war will continue to be regulated only by bankruptcy and death.”