The Assisted Places Scheme introduced by England's Conservative government in 1980 provides for the government to make up the difference between the cost of private secondary school tuition and the amount that eligible students can afford to pay (determined according to a sliding scale based on parent income). As a result, the private schools can…

The insights of various theoretical perspectives on school improvement can be integrated in a common framework called "the institutional perspective" when the sensitivity of each theoretical perspective to the nature of decision making for school improvement is taken into account. The institutional perspective thus generated considers the…

The Hawke Labor government in Australia, elected in 1983, conforms to a well-defined international trend away from stong public support for education and welfare spending. This paper focuses on the education policies of the Hawke government and compares them with those of the previous Fraser government and with those of the Reagan administration…

Educational data collection may be fraught with problems because of individuals' resentment and resistance to providing data. State and local education agencies often report that data requests from federal agencies represent an administrative burden, especially when they are not an expected part of the personnel workload. Educators may not know…

The authors offer their view of a normative basis for an approach to teacher education that contributes to the establishment of more critical and emancipatory practices in the public schools of United States. These ideas are then linked to the broader tradition of radicalism in teacher education. A variety of conceptual lenses and instructional…

This volume, part of a series of monographs that explores the relationship between the economy and schooling, is intended to show how economists have sought to cast light on the economic nature of education, on resource allocation problems within the education sector, and on policy implications of such analyses. The first part describes the basic…

On May 21 and 22, 1987, a conference on educational reform was held in Greensboro, North Carolina, attended by almost 200 North Carolina educational leaders and prominent newspaper editors, along with educational experts from outside the state. The conference consisted of six major presentations and four reaction panels, along with small group…

Legal and policy initiatives to achieve various tuition policy goals are proposed for the Massachusetts Board of Regents of Higher Education. The suggested tuition policy builds on the policy adopted by the Board in 1984. Details are provided on tuition and access, tuition and equity, the margin for excellence, tuition and fees, and…

Concentrating on theoretical perspectives on reading, writing and language research, this yearbook contains 33 articles which cover the politics of literacy, emergent and early literacy, vocabulary, comprehension, content area reading, writing, and teacher effectiveness. Articles include: (1) "Tomorrow's Readers Today: Becoming a Profession of…

This presentation identifies factors which contributed to the rise of gifted/talented education programs in California from 1960 to 1987, factors contributing to the demise of such programs, and recommendations for improving the California Gifted and Talented Education (GATE) Program. Recent years have brought about a lessening of the program's…

This research examined the distributional and programmatic impact of the Education Consolidation and Improvement Act (ECIA) of 1981, Chapter 2, during its first year of implementation, to determine how it has measured up to meeting the goal for which it was enacted, and whether or not the Reagan Administration's promises regarding block grants…

Much recent research on educational organizations, including that of Meyer and Rowan (1977, 1978), has depicted them as ritualistically legitimated, internally loosely-coupled systems. Willower, however, has argued (1982) that legitimization of schools by their communities is not merely ritualistic but is ordinarily problematic. To examine…

The value system of a school is a major factor affecting the teacher's working conditions, but public discourse on educational reform tends to avoid serious discussion of the most deeply embedded values in our educational system. This absence of serious reflection on values limits consideration of alternatives for improving both education and the…

The current debate on educational reform includes many proposals to increase teacher participation in decision-making in order to make school policy and management more responsive to local needs. This paper argues that policy goals for teacher involvement should be geared to helping school staff, both teachers and administrators, meet the needs of…

If one counts both the mid-term and presidential elections, the United States has had the lowest voter turnout of any democracy in the world. In the 1986 election, only 16.6% of the eligible 18-24 year olds voted, and although final census surveys for that year are not yet published, it is unlikely that the turnout for that age group would have…