President Bush's education legacy is inexorably tied to the No Child Left Behind Act, the comprehensive K-12 reform law he signed in January 2002. The law has drawn praise for requiring schools to show specific progress in educating minority and low-income children or face sanctions for failing to do so. But critics say the Bush administration…

International education has generated complex problems of governance. As well as being beneficiaries of educational services and consumers of a product, international students are also migrants, workers and beings with civil rights. Arguably, the regulation of international student security as consumer protection fails to recognize this full range…

Matteo Fontana, the student-aid official in the U.S. Department of Education who was suspended last month in an ethics case, issued a controversial high-stakes legal ruling in 2004 that benefited his former employer, Sallie Mae, on the day before the nation's top student lender completed its transition from a government-founded lender into a…

Colleges would be required to give students information to help them shop around among loan providers under proposed changes in student-loan programs announced by the U.S. Department of Education. The proposed regulations represent the department's most significant response to date to the continuing controversy over conflicts of interest in the…

Given the intense efforts to change federal legislation, it is surprising that relatively little research has examined how postsecondary institutions respond to organizational pressures and local contexts. These "boundary activities" determine actual practice (Birnbaum, 1991) and may be the only way to remedy the exclusion of undocumented…

Public education is one of the central tasks of a democratic society, and the buildings that house this important task not only shape the way one teaches, but provide icons and symbols for the values people hold common as a society. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this context has placed school buildings squarely in a position of debate and innovation…

In 2003 the U.S. Department of Education issued regulations allowing states to develop alternate standards and assessments for students with the most significant cognitive disabilities. This study reviews and summarizes alternate assessment policies and practices--and their implementation and impact--for the most significantly cognitively…

This study examined whether instructional policies at the local level are becoming standardized as a result of state and federal accountability initiatives. A stratified random sample of 21 Virginia school districts was used, and the policies reviewed covered seven topics: class size, student grouping, homework, remedial instruction programs,…

In June 1986, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) released its "Report and Order" and its "Third Computer Inquiry," which proposed to remove the then-current requirement that AT&T and the Bell Operating Companies (BOCs) provide enhanced services only through separate subsidiaries. Instead, AT&T and the BOCs…

This paper, the first in a series exploring future options for public policy in the communications and information arenas, argues that there is a continuing role for public policy in the electronic media marketplace. It contends that the role of television in our society is too important for it to be regarded as just another business, and the…

This paper, the second in a series exploring future options for public policy in the communications and information arenas, examines some of the issues underlying public broadcasting, primarily public television. It advances two reasons why quality local public television programming is scarce: funds for the original production of programming have…

This newsletter focuses on the relationship between the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and religious broadcasters. It traces the history of that relationship and discusses some of the pressures put on both. It includes a discussion of a recent avalanche of mail at the FCC supporting the church on the airways. It also summarizes some of…

This general guide to copyright in the United States briefly describes the following: the nature of copyright, who can claim it, copyright available for published and unpublished works, what can and cannot be copyrighted, how to secure a copyright, publication, notice of copyright, copyright registration, registration procedures, corrections or…

This "Report and Order" from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) represents the examination of thousands of comments and an expert determination of the future needs of the nongovernmental users of the radio spectrum in the United States. The proposals it contains will be part of the United States' proposals at the 1979 World…

Describes the Northwest Ordinance as a victory for both the North and the South as each section received concessions which strengthened its interests. Discusses the document's historical background and assesses the effect of the Ordinance on the practice of slavery. (GEA)