Frederick M. Hess came to AEI in 2002 from the University of Virginia to be a resident scholar. His research on education issues looks in particular at school choice and at the training and credentialing of school officials. Mr. Hess is the executive editor of Education Next and the author of many journal articles and several books, most recently Revolution at the Margins: The Impact of Competition on Urban School Systems (2002).

Opponents of private-school voucher programs often argue that increasing education options will lower the quality of public schools by drawing funds away from public school systems and toward private schools. At a March event, Thomas Nechyba, a professor of economics and public policy studies at Duke University, analyzed the impact of school choice on public school quality and found that any negative impacts would be small--and in many circumstances the quality of public schools could substantially increase. Mr. Hess and Derek Neal, a professor of economics at the University of Chicago, commented on Mr. Nechyba's findings.

Despite efforts to improve mathematics education in the United States, the August 2001 National Assessment of Educational Progress report found that a majority of children are still unable to perform at a basic level in mathematics and that an achievement gap between white and minority students continues to persist in that subject. An event hosted by Lynne V. Cheney examined the divergent views that have emerged in debates about education reform, with one view emphasizing the systematic mastery of basic skills and standard methods, and the other deemphasizing the direct teaching of basic skills, encouraging the use of calculators from kindergarten on, and recommending that students discover methods of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division for themselves.

In addition, Mrs. Cheney hosted an event on the persistent weakness of U.S. history education. Wilfred McClay of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga gave the main presentation, and he and the discussants spoke about why U.S. history remains a mystery to students, what they should learn about our country's past, and what can be done to accelerate reform.