Jay Mathews

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Jay Mathews is an author and education columnist with the Washington Post .

Contents

Career

Mathews has worked at the Washington Post writing news reports and books about China, disability rights, the stock market, and education. He writes the Class Struggle blog for the Washington Post.

He has prepared the annual ranking of "America’s Most Challenging High Schools" for the Washington Post (and previously for Newsweek ) for 18 years. He developed the "challenge index" by counting how many individuals take Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate, and Advanced International Certificate of Education tests at a school each year, divided by the number of graduating seniors. [1] [2] Top-performing schools are excluded. [3]

He previously held Bureau Chief posts at locations including Beijing, as its first Bureau Chief in 1979-1980, and Los Angeles. He spent several weeks back in Beijing in 1989 to cover the Tiananmen protests at the time, [4] and has since challenged the dominant media narrative of a student massacre inside Tiananmen Square, reporting that all remaining students at the square, were allowed to leave the square peacefully when soldiers arrived, and that instead hundreds of people, mostly workers and passersby did perish that night, "but in a different place and under different circumstances". [5]

Bibliography

YearTitlePagesPublisherISBN
1985One Billion448Ballentine ISBN   0345298950
1985China and the U.S.Foreign Policy Association ISBN   0871240947
1986Sino-American Relations After Normalization: Toward the Second Decade63Foreign Policy Association ISBN   0871241056
1988Escalante: The Best Teacher in America322Henry Holt & Co. ISBN   0805011951
1992A Mother's Touch: The Tiffany Callo Story265Henry Holt & Co. ISBN   0805017143
1998The Myth of Tiananmen and the Price of a Passive Press12Columbia Journalism Review
1998Class Struggle : What's Wrong (and Right) with America's Best Public High Schools320Times Books ISBN   0812931408
2003Harvard Schmarvard: Getting Beyond the Ivy League to the College That is Best for You304Three Rivers Press ISBN   0761536957
2005Supertest: How the International Baccalaureate Can Strengthen Our Schools237Open Court ISBN   0812695771
2009Work Hard. Be Nice.328Algonquin Books ISBN   9781565125162
2012"The War Against Dummy Math"140American Institutes for Research ISBN   1456340115
2015"Question Everything"266Jossey-Bass ISBN   9781118438190

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References

  1. "Education: How the America’s Most Challenging High Schools list works," The Washington Post April 19, 2015
  2. Jay Matthews, "That’s the Idea: Some schools serving low-income students believe in a challenge" Washington Post April 12, 2016
  3. "Public Elites List".
  4. Jay Mathews, "Back to School in Beijing," Washington Post August 13, 1989
  5. Jay Mathews, "The Myth of Tiananmen, And the Price of a Passive Press." Columbia Journalism Review Sept/Oct 1998