An educational reform effort to implement a comprehensive school act in British Columbia (Canada) is analyzed with a focus on some sociotechnical and political aspects. An overview of the content, background, and implementation of the reform effort is followed by identification of seven contradictions inherent in the plan. Contradictions are as…

South Africa is in a state of transition. In viewing the struggle between apartheid's defenders and its opponents, social scientists can make the valuable contribution of projecting alternative scenarios of change as it relates to the way in which state institutions intersect with society. This paper is part of a larger study of South Africa that…

Reunification of Germany, democratic changes in Eastern European countries, and new government policies of the Soviet Union will lead to the reduction of U.S. troops in West Germany. As a Department of Defense contractor providing associate degrees to soldiers in Europe, Central Texas College (CTC) will be severely affected by the troop…

During the 1988-89 school year, two local school districts were placed into "Phase III" of the Kentucky Educational Improvement Act (1978), a category of state receivership in which much local decision-making power was transferred to Kentucky Department of Education officials. When state education department intervention occurs, major…

The effectiveness of parent choice plans requires that schools-for-profit be given an equal opportunity to compete with government and nonprofit schools in the educational marketplace. Little information is available about schools-for-profit because most states do not gather separate statistical data on that category. However, the following…

A general outline of the development and the status quo of political education in the Netherlands, focusing on the degree of internationalization, is presented. In the light of current and future educational/political developments, attention also is devoted to the North-South issue (the existence of people in developing nations in relation to the…

The National Literacy Campaign of Zimbabwe was launched in July, 1983. The objectives of the campaign were to enable adults (1) to understand information about themselves, their localities, and their country; and (2) to become effective leaders and productive members of their cooperatives, village committees, management committees, and other…

The financial restraint of the last 3 years and the related rhetoric of accountability, productivity, cost effectiveness, and retrenchment have introduced new levels of trauma into the educational scene in British Columbia, exercising a particularly powerful impact on the community college sector. In a financial context that requires governments…

The paper traces the life of the 18th century North Carolinian planter Willie Jones and his transformed political stance from traditional commitment to the Crown to a new constitutional faith in republicanism. Jones' political career and struggles are noted through the Revolutionary era and the controversy of centralized versus decentralized…

What many educators see as the assistance of a program evaluation is often an intrusion into the governance of the program being evaluated. Redistribution of authority and control occur not only because evaluation findings support one constituency more than another, but the very act of evaluating affords protective status to the initiators of the…

Academic freedom for precollegiate teachers in the United States is less clear than that expressed and confirmed in law and custom for college faculties. The question studied was how academic freedom is perceived in theory and practice by secondary school teachers outside of the United States. The interview schedule was modeled after schedules…

Several approaches that policymakers may wish to consider in enacting and sustaining educational excellence are summarized. This issue brief draws from presentations given at two sessions on education and excellence held at the 1983 meeting of the National Conference of State Legislatures. California's approach is highlighted, based on the…

Mexican mass media, especially television, incorporates an abundance of American programming and serves as a catalyst to motivate lower strata Mexicans to pursue life in the United States, resulting in a tremendous influx of both legal and illegal Mexicans and other Latin Americans to the United States. Although Mexico benefits because many…

The result of a decade of work collecting documents, interviews, and observations, the manuscript describes the operation of the modern day Samoan educational system against an historical background of three previous eras that reach back over 200 years to a time when Samoa was virtually unknown to the western world. The development of Samoan…

Limited to periodical literature, this annotated bibliography on school finance contains 81 references grouped in 5 categories: (1) policy and politica issues, (2) federal government, (3) state issues, (4) aid to nonpublic schools, and (5) accountability. Following the bibliographic citations, annotations range from 4 to 15 lines and conclude by…