The author is a historian of education and has written often about the educational enthusiasms and fads of the past century. One of her books, titled "Left Back," tells the story of the rise and fall of one fad after another across the 20th century. In brief, what she has found is that in the land of American pedagogy, innovation is frequently…

As long as there have been public schools, there have been reformers of public schools. All too often, they have insisted on sweeping changes; enamored of their bold, new idea, they haven't considered whether anything established ought to endure. The result? A century of faddish ideas, but little real progress. Among today's most vocal reformers…