Jay Mathews

Jay Mathews (born April 5, 1945, in Long Beach, California) is an author, education reporter and online columnist with the "Washington Post". Mathews attended Hillsdale High School in San Mateo, California, Occidental and Harvard College and is a Vietnam veteran. He started at the Post in 1971, writing news reports and books about China, disability rights, the stock market, and several educational topics. Mathews won the 1999 Benjamin Fine Award for Outstanding Education Reporting for both features and column writing. His column "Class Struggles" appears weekly on the online version of the Post.

Mathew's book "Escalante: The Best Teacher in America" traces Jaime Escalante's career from his native Bolivia to Garfield High School in East Lost Angeles, where he taught advanced mathematics courses to disadvantaged high school students, mostly Latino. Escalante's story was the subject of the film "Stand and Deliver", which starred Edward James Olmos.

"Class Struggle: What's Wrong (and Right) with America's Best Public High Schools", was published in March 1998. It explored elite American public high schools and criticized the selection process that offers advanced Advanced Placement Program (AP) studies to only the top students. His rating system for high schools, the Challenge Index, is used by the "Washington Post" and "Newsweek" magazine annually to rank U.S. high schools. Other books explore the Ivy League admissions system, and the growth of International Baccalaureate programs and their effect on academic improvement.

Published works

External links

* [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/linkset/2005/03/24/LI2005032400611.html/ Class Struggle online column]