Argues that dynamic systems theories may illuminate processes whereby public policy influences child development and highlight gaps in current relevant research. Discusses five principles of dynamic systems theories using examples from research addressing effects of current antipoverty and welfare policies on children. Concludes by suggesting…

While access to educational opportunities has increased, associated mental health services have lagged behind and frequently lack sufficient depth, scope, and duration. This article offers lessons for clinicians derived from recent legislative amendments and developments in the case law surrounding the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.…

Environmental self-auditing is said to deserve and require encouragement. Although firms can audit themselves more cheaply and effectively than regulators, they are deterred for fear that information they uncover will be used against them. To reduce this disincentive, the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA's) Audit Policy lowers punitive fines…

Since the 1970s, federal, state and local governments have launched an array of new high technology development programs. Researchers and policy-makers disagree about the relative merits of these policies. We address the effects of seven of these policies on high tech industry employment growth in metropolitan statistical areas in the United…

The U.S. Supreme Court declined an opportunity last week to rule on the constitutionality of a school district's policy of weighing race as a factor in assigning students to schools. It has sidestepped a potentially thorny sequel to its 2003 rulings on affirmative action in higher education and left several lower-court rulings as the best…

The role of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in shaping educational development has been considerable. For more than half a century, the scale and reach of UNDP education projects have been significant, yet have not been adequately researched. For both UNDP and its precursors, the evolution of policies for development and for…

This article discusses the Government's proposals for "extended" primary schools, an important element in the recently-published five-year plan for education. The author expresses concern that extended primary schools will not provide a variety of experiences, including "play" experiences for young children.

This article is an attempt to provide a partial corrective to more traditional analyses of higher education policy that most often obscure broader social factors that contribute to unequal power relations and educational outcomes related to social class, gender, and race/ethnicity. This article focuses specifically on gender issues and employs a…

This chapter analyses energy relations through a prism of three interlinked concepts: administration, politics and security. This triad describes the basic approaches to questions about technical, politicised and securitised energy. These three concepts are logically linked to one another and represent an elementary matrix; a prism through which…

Headship in England was radically altered in nature in 1988 by the Education Reform Act which introduced the principle of local management of schools. Despite this legislative intervention, however, the model of headship in England remained virtually unchanged, rather it was headteacher behaviour that changed. The maintained school system is still…

Historically, the consolidation of school districts has brought with it many promises and perils. In this paper, the author links curriculum and community involvement within the consolidation context.

The predictable failure of reform has been a characteristic of education systems for some years. However, the tendency of policy makers to attribute blame for any implementation deficit solely to schools and school systems is somewhat at odds with the historical evidence presented in this article. Through the lens of school development planning,…

"From the Courtroom to the Classroom" examines recent developments pertaining to school desegregation in the United States. As the editors note, it comes at a time marked by a "general downplaying of race and ethnicity as criteria for the allocation of public resources, as well as a weakening of the political forces that support…

This dissertation problematizes the "state dossier system" (SDS): the production and accumulation of personal information on citizen subjects exceeding the reasonable bounds of risk management. SDS--comprising interconnecting subsystems of records and identification--damage individual autonomy and self-determination, impacting not only…

To give states the information they need to sustain hard-fought education reform effectively, Achieve conducted research on state education reforms that have been sustained successfully for over a decade or more. Funded by the GE Foundation, Achieve hopes this work will help other state leaders, wherever they may be on their road to reform,…