Ambitious School Overhaul Drive Hits Delays
Officials in San Bernardino, Calif., had to scale back plans for a makeover at Pacific High School.
By SAM DILLON
Published: August 23, 2010
Enlarge This ImageSAN BERNARDINO, Calif. — Secretary of Education Arne Duncanset an ambitious goal last year of overhauling 1,000 schools a year, using billions of dollars in federal stimulus money.
Monica Almeida/The New York Times
Pacific High School was supposed to be converted into a charter school.
But that effort is off to an uneven start. Schools from Maine to California are starting the fall term with their overhaul plans postponed or in doubt because negotiations among federal regulators, state officials and local educators have led to delays and confusion.
In this sprawling district east of Los Angeles, for example,
Scholars Test Web Alternative to Peer Review
Dan Cohen, director of the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University, is among the academics who advocate a more open, Web-based approach to reviewing scholarly works.
By PATRICIA COHEN
Published: August 23, 2010
For professors, publishing in elite journals is an unavoidable part of university life. The grueling process of subjecting work to the up-or-down judgment of credentialed scholarly peers has been a cornerstone of academic culture since at least the mid-20th century.Now some humanities scholars have begun to challenge the monopoly that peer review has on admission to career-making journals and, as a consequence, to the charmed circle of tenured academe. They argue that in an era of digital media there is a better way to assess the quality of work. Instead of relying on a few experts selected by leading publications, they advocate using the Internet to