Newark, New Jersey has been at the forefront of school reform from the civil rights era through more recent efforts to resist neoliberal school reform approaches during the 2010s. Drawing on interviews with activists, policymakers, and school reformers, this paper documents the history of community organizing as a strategy to improve conditions in…

The regional universities in Russia are an important resource for the development of Russian society, but more needs to be done to increase their effectiveness, including tackling corruption and leveraging local competitive advantages.

Education played a pivotal role in African-Americans' post-World War II struggle for equality. Many activists believed that victories against racially discriminatory school systems would lead to gains in other critical areas. By examining Howalton Day School, a black private school on Chicago's South Side in operation from 1946-1986, this article…

Schools serve both to connect and separate people within society. Therefore, the landscape of school reform presents an opportunity to explicate the opposing forces of connectedness and competition that are entrenched in twenty-first century society. It can serve as a laboratory in which to study foundational social issues. This study is an…

Despite pessimistic appraisals, the movement for community control has already made significant inroads, and is likely to become one of the most successful educational reform movements'' in history. (DM)

Describes how New York City's African Free School became a focal point of Black community aspirations in the early 1800s and how the Black community struggled, with limited success, to maintain a role in determination of educational policies in the school. (CMG)

Identifies key ideas in the new plans for urban community control of schools that have already played a role in the controversies of the earlier era of progressive education. Suggests that those ideas, when combined with local and decentralized control of school organization, produce new dilemmas for professional educators in the present era.…

Noting that a historical example of local control is valuable in assessing the results of greater community involvement in school affairs, this article focuses on the development of the decentralized Pittsburgh school system, which in the early 1900's was composed of 38 sub-district boards, each possessing authority to levy taxes and to appoint…

Examines the scope and variety of past demands for community-controlled schools in New York, which were especially visible in the actions of three groups: Irish Catholics in the 1840s; Jews in the period surrounding the turn of the century; Italians in the middle 1930s and early 1940s. (Author/JM)

This research describes "how" and "when" the separate schools in nineteenth-century Boston were organized and the role of the black community in the establishment of a system of segregated education. (Editor/RK)

Argues that ways exist to include parents and communities in educational decision making without sacrificing the gains which teachers' unions have won. Describes and assesses several strategies for opening up the bargaining process. (Editor/RK)

According to popular analysis, parental objections to busing are generated by a perceived "loss of control" over the education of their children. It is the thesis of this essay that this loss of control began well before the current dispute over busing. It is helpful to view the process of parental political disenfranchisement as one that has…

A detailed and critical review of an anthology edited by Nathan Wright entitled What Black Educators Are Saying.'' (JM)

"Politics" is used in a broad sense to refer to the social, economic, political, and civil forces that impinge on the publicly financed school system. These forces are generated both from outside and inside the educational system. It is the author's view that the big cities and the school systems of most of these cities are in just enough trouble…