This 17th edition of "Education Week's" annual "Quality Counts" report takes aim at an issue freighted with emotional as well as policy implications: the impact of a school's social and disciplinary environment on students' ability to learn and on the teachers and administrators tasked with guiding them. National initiatives to improve schools…

Educational administrative practitioners evaluate theories, implement practices, and refine leadership strategies daily. The exploration of the leadership gap between theory and praxis is a quantum undertaking. Leadership from the educational perspective takes many forms and presents many challenges. This document examines leadership from several…

Case studies for secondary school students based on recent federal cases focus on the extent to which a student's right to privacy may be diminished by the school environment. Decisions have been based on the school offical acting in the place of parents and as a state agent. Discussion questions are included. (KC)

The eight chapters of this theme issue describe studies of learning environments conducted in a variety of conceptual and methodological perspectives by researchers in the United States, Canada, Australia, and the Netherlands. Studies reflect perspectives on conceptualizations of learning environments that range from objectivist to more…

K. S. Schiller, S. Plank, and B. Schneider argue that whether or not curricular differences exist between choice and nonchoice public schools cannot be answered by the analysis of Sosniak and Ethington. Sosniak and Ethington reiterate that choice as a policy is not a mechanism for stimulating curriculum change. (SLD)

The OECD Programme on Educational Building, together with the Association of Higher Education Facilities Officers (APPA) and the OECD Programme on Institutional Management in Higher Education, organised an international conference on the planning, design and management of facilities for higher education institutions on April 24-27, 2005. The…

This series of 32 brief reports reviews a number of issues related to the role and representation of blacks in American higher education. Issues related to enrollment, student life, graduate study, faculty, and administration are highlighted as the status of blacks in the nation's colleges and universities is explored. (SLD)

This review examines research that has investigated the complexities of the associations among families, schools, and children's school outcomes. General categories of studies are (1) social-arithmetic environmental research; (2) family and school structural characteristics; (3) the environmental press of families and schools; and (4)…