The movement towards national academic standards and high-stakes testing is driven by corporate interests seeking profits and ultimately, privatization of public education. Teachers, parents, and students have had no input into these policy decisions. Research shows that the standards movement penalizes low-income and minority students, replaces…

Analyzes political tensions related to student strikes at the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico (UNAM), 1998-2000, which were sparked by proposed tuition fees. Discusses conflict between social justice sentiments focused on free and egalitarian access to higher education versus market-driven views promoting selective, competitive higher…

Professors John M. Barron and Michael E. Staten's article in Vol. 34, No. 3 of this journal, "Usage of Credit Cards Received through College Student-Marketing Programs," purports to "provide benchmark measures of college student credit card usage." Based on empirical analyses of proprietary industry data, they conclude that "There is no…

The long economic boom enabled school districts nationwide to fund expensive reforms and hefty pay raises. Now, however, they are finding it nearly impossible to cut costs and balance their budgets. The specific path to financial distress is unique in each case. Any number of factors, from excessively generous concessions at the bargaining table…

This article explores the complex relationship between language and mathematics education in multilingual settings by presenting an analysis of one lesson from a multilingual primary mathematics classroom in South Africa taught by an appropriately qualified and experienced teacher. English emerged as a dominant language in this classroom, and this…

Affirmative action as a policy to solve past racism has existed since the civil rights movement in the mid-twentieth century. Since its inception there has been controversy as to whether affirmative action can stand legal scrutiny. If it can, then under what circumstances and for what programs may it be used? Since the "Bakke" case in…

There is a supranational tendency in educational governance towards a "management by projects" policy, which substitutes democratic procedures and norm-based control in the materialisation of educational justice. The organisational level becomes crucial for the management of education and the pressure to conceive education as a…

This article explores the challenges facing the South African National Department of Education in its commitment to provide equal educational opportunities for all. "The Story of Nothemba" is central to the theme of this paper. It describes the story of a South African girl born in eQebe, whose physical disability and systematic…

Purpose: This study considers the recently established higher vocational education reforms with Swedish advanced vocational education (AVE) and Finnish polytechnics in terms of organisational structure, the design of workplace learning, and furthermore, what kind of practical implications these new models of learning at work have resulted in.…

The "learning turn" that has occurred in discussions of education and training is here subject to critique. The change of discourse signifies more than mere change of linguistic style, with claims being made to a new paradigm by proponents of what may be termed "learnerism". The claims made by the advocates of learnerism for…

This article describes a school improvement initiative involving five primary schools (ages 5-11 years) working in partnership with each other with support from a university department of education. It provides evidence of the benefits to be gained from teachers sharing and developing collective knowledge through participation in school-based…

Through the 1960s, African-Americans earned much less than whites--even when their cognitive abilities (as measured by test scores) were similar. By the end of the century, however, many believed that employment discrimination had attenuated to such a degree that the gap in labor-market outcomes could be explained almost entirely by differences in…

In 1951, three brief commentaries in the "Journal of Negro Education" drew public attention to the potentially tenuous job security of African-American educators in the South, Black professionals whose employment status was being called into question as southern educational institutions faced the prospect of desegregation. The specific incident…

In the context of today's turbulent university life, public education debates, and highly charged political milieu, the phrase "middle school teacher education" might be said to describe a less-than-quiet target of opportunity for a whole host of groups who despise the values, meanings, and the central goals of the middle school movement…

Despite the ethnic and linguistic diversity found in California's public schools, or because of it, in 1998 voters approved Proposition 227, a ballot initiative designed to dismantle bilingual education programs in the state. By the 2003-2004 school year, the California Department of Education reports that statewide 8,908 teachers were providing…