This 3- to 5-day currriculum unit for secondary students centers around four possible directions for U.S. foreign policy during the 1990s. Designed as a culminating exercise at the end of the year or as an introductory activity to open the semester, this unit, and the possible futures it presents, should be thought of as a vehicle for guiding…

Current efforts of curriculum reform within the federal systems of Australia and the Federal Republic of Germany are examined in this paper. The hypothesis is that the federal systems of government, in which the allocation of powers is granted to subnational governments, create independent authorities and prevent the development of national…

Findings of a study that explored problems in the development of two newly created metropolitan middle schools are presented in this paper. Based on a framework of organizational change, the main premise contends that as new organizations, schools are also inherently vulnerable to the generic problems that face all organizations undergoing change.…

This bulletin reviews the 1990-91 term of the U.S. Supreme Court in terms of its impact on public schools, finding that the Court tended to decline to review decisions by lower courts that gave school districts discretion to resolve questions of student and employee rights. Court opinions that were handed down are discussed, and the impact of…

This special theme issue of "Educational Foundations" contains five articles on the theme of "The Politics of Education." In Marie E. Wirsing's "Academic Freedom and Teaching Foundations of Education: A Personal Memoir," the history of academic freedom, including the constant struggles to preserve it and examples of significant infringement, are…

Findings from a historical case study that analyzed a school board decision making process during a crisis situation are presented in this paper. Criminal allegations made against the superintendent of a midwestern school system in 1984 created a crisis for the board of education. The superintendent of schools was charged with third degree sexual…

Because it has been overworked, underanalyzed, and undefined, critical thinking has come to mean anything or nothing. The best work on critical thinking imagines it as an act of composing and revising. Definitions of critical thinking have undergone a historical evolution--from general problem-solving "skills" to a complex of…

Findings of a study that examined the teacher-administrator relationship from a micropolitical perspective are presented in this paper. Data were derived from interviews with 12 new administrators from school districts within a 50-mile radius of a major metropolitan area in the eastern United States. The micropolitical analysis identifies power…

This study focuses on school report cards as an accountability tool, and on how their use interacts with one of the most persistent problems facing the public education system, i.e., the continuing underachievement of minority students. The paper looks specifically at the issues concerning the desirability of reporting student performance by race…

The European Community (EC) is continually increasing its influence in all areas of European society, politically, economically, and now educationally. The future, it is argued, may see the EC as a supra-national policy maker for higher education as significant, as are national governments at the present time. This paper examines the role of the…

This book shows how educators can become more versatile managers and more artistic leaders. In part 1, chapter 1 shows why reframing--the use of multiple lenses--is vital to effective leadership and management. It introduces the four basic lenses for organizational analysis--the structural, human resource, political, and symbolic frames--and show…

Between 1795 and 1993, elementary and secondary schooling in New York State shifted from a private/local to a public/state activity. That shift from local to state control and identity involved a lengthy political struggle and reveals the historical working-out of two conflicting themes in the American political tradition: popular democratic…

This book seeks to analyze the involvement of U.S. presidents in education and to correlate this analysis with an assessment of national educational outcomes. In the early republic, the founding fathers stressed education mainly as a tool for citizenship. Having successfully gained independence through a revolution, they perceived education as the…

This paper documents the study of three schools participating in a school-improvement initiative carried out by the Board of Education of the City of New York, the Fund for New York City Public Education (the Fund), and the International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) during the 1990-91 school year. The project, the IBM/Fund Project for…

The role of the school board and strategies for collective bargaining are described in this guide. Section 1 describes the development of a board philosophy, including techniques and imperatives for the collective bargaining table. The second section examines the school board role in negotiations, with a focus on its role in labor relations and…