In 1946, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) was formed to promote peace through education and cross-cultural understanding. In the postwar atomic age, American leaders saw UNESCO and education for world citizenship as critical to the prevention of future war, the promotion of a new pluralistic vision,…

This study offers a comparative examination of desegregation policy reforms in Belgium, Chile, and the Netherlands, addressing equity reforms to universal school choice systems. Through an analysis of the reform trajectories, we explore the evolution of policies, the causal mechanisms of change, efforts to institutionalize policies, and the…

During the apartheid rule in South Africa, established universities and other tertiary institutions were forcibly segregated to serve particular racial groups. Some critics have stated that the apartheid regime in South Africa supported an exclusively Western model of education, and that university education was based on a mono-cultural approach…

Oftentimes, policymakers discuss school reform only in terms of its benefits to students. In this brief, researcher Bartley R. Danielsen identifies how more multifaceted reforms can not only improve educational outcomes for students but also revitalize communities by encouraging wealthy families to remain in lower-income areas, thereby raising…

The desegregation of American public school systems in the wake of "Brown v. Board of Education" (1954) was a vast, protracted, and, in many cases, frustrated historical project that impacted individual communities in a multitude of ways. Drawing upon official school board records, court documents, oral histories, newspaper accounts,…

Schools do not receive much recognition within urban sociological research for the role they perform in shaping the demographic, structural, and social features of neighborhoods, cities, and metropolitan areas. In contrast, this article links schools, and the racial avoidance that operates through educational policy, to the extreme economic…

The demise of apartheid in 1994 introduced many changes to the social, political, and economic sectors of South Africa with similar changes in the higher education sector. This article offers an integrative review and analysis of higher education policies implemented and legislation passed that significantly impacted the nature of the South…

The state of North Carolina is one of few states in the South in which two large districts committed to desegregating schools in the early 1970s. However, the state's two largest districts, Charlotte-Mecklenberg Schools (CMS) and Wake County Public School System (WCPSS) have experienced ups and downs in their policy commitment to desegregated…

Background: In 1954, the "Brown v. Board of Education" case involved four states and their school segregation laws and policies. During that period, de jure and de facto segregation were a way of life in America. Sixty years later, as most schools across the country have resegregated, the authors ask the question of whether we should be…

The article is a transcript of a talk given by the author at a University of California Berkeley Graduate School of Education symposium. He argues that the role of the state has changed quite dramatically since the 1960s. From the postwar period through the 1970s, there was an emphasis on expanding the state, and an emphasis on growing more…

The success of the Montgomery County Public Schools rests on a pervasive culture of high expectations and a commitment to the teachers and other staff. Too many reform efforts fail to engage and support the workforce. When the staff members are engaged, they will translate standards into something meaningful for each student.

The education policy and philanthropy communities to date have placed a premium on funding charter schools that have high concentrations of poverty and large numbers of minority students. This report asks: Might it make more sense for foundations and policymakers to embrace a variety of approaches, including efforts to demonstrate the feasibility…

Under the apartheid state, higher education was structured to maintain and reproduce the subordinate social and economic position of non-Whites. The post-apartheid higher education sector suffered from fragmentation along racial lines, a lack of sustainability, and a structural incapacity to meet the challenges of restructuring and development.…

The Supreme Court declared in 1954 that "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal." Into the 1970s, urban education reform focused predominantly on making sure that African American students had the opportunity to attend school with their white peers. Now, however, most reformers take as a given that the typical low-income minority…

Two innovative programs in Belgium promote both educational equity and quality as they reach out to ethnically diverse families. The Bridge Person project in Ghent addresses Belgium's immigrant achievement gap by creating meaningful relationships between schools and socially disadvantaged families. The School in Sight project in Antwerp seeks to…