Describes how a second-grade inner-city class in California, 80% Spanish-speaking and suffering from a severe lack of books and textbooks, became a class of authors, making books themselves. Relates how their classroom library grew to over 400 books in six weeks, with children becoming avid, passionate readers and writers in the process. (SR)

Discusses the blurring of boundaries between state and private education system that has occurred since 1979 in Britain. Notes that the system has always maintained degrees of support for private and state-supported education. Investigates the social and political influences involved in the implementation of school vouchers and the 1988…

Develops a model of progressive school reform based on recent work in institutionalist theory. The authors present findings from preliminary empirical tests of the model, which provide strong support for an institutionalist account and considerably weaker support for political explanations of reform. (GR)

Conceptualizes a new vision of multicultural education going beyond the piecemeal inclusion of previously underrepresented cultures. Global humanities emphasizes the interactivity and interdependence inherent in cross-cultural interrelationships. Briefly discusses the scholarship of Janet Abu-Lughod and its antecedents. (MJP)

Presents a concise overview of the responsibilities, membership, structure, and requirements of the Federal Election Commission (FEC). Created in 1974, the FEC oversees the financial activities of candidates and political parties. Discusses corporate and union political action committees (PACs) as well as contribution limits and prohibitions. (MJP)

Examines the controversies and consequences involved in drawing proper districts for federal and state representatives. Discusses the Supreme Court's role in deciding these questions. Provides definitions and related court cases concerning gerrymandering and malapportionment, the two most common abuses of the districting process. (MJP)

Describes a variety of educational resources designed to help teachers develop units of study around the November 1996 elections. Includes videos, study guides, activity books, pamphlets, and organization reports for grades K-12. Annotations include grade level designation and ordering information. (MJP)

The voucher "air war" is a conflict between two longstanding elements of the American political tradition: a time-honored commitment to maximum personal choice and individual freedom versus an equally compelling belief in need for a common civil infrastructure and communitarian interests. Will embracing vouchers further erode the public…

Describes the struggles and triumphs of a Maori community in the Bay of Islands (New Zealand) as it took local control of its rural school and made it fully bilingual. A series of government reforms have made the Maori people responsible for administering the school with insufficient funds while the government maintains power over the curriculum…

Examines intense and bitter conflict over public education in the Philippines occurring immediately after the Spanish-American War and the U.S. annexation of the islands. The U.S. replacement of the popular Catholic school system with a secular system resulted in opposition that eventually focused on textbook selection. (MJP)

Parents need to understand the responsibilities of people at all levels of school governance. This paper discusses the role of the state government (usually state boards of education), the local school board, the superintendent, and the principal. A sidebar presents information on teamwork involving PTAs, principals, superintendents, and school…

Goals 2000 is the offspring of "A Nation at Risk," a 1983 teacher- and school-bashing report. IBM CEO Louis Gerstner named the problem and defined the solution, claiming the need for choice, competition, and technology, recasting students as human capital, and marketizing the teacher/community relationship. Tables summarize critics'…

The following case study (Stake, 2000) explores the collective properties of the group of leaders working together to enact instructional change in an urban high school (Spillane, et al., 2001). It documents how an urban public high continues to work toward developing and enacting a model of leadership that is transformational, distributed, and…

This paper argues that the Tertiary and Further Education system in Australia has responded to globalisation in two paradoxical ways; the pro-active response of internationalisation and the reactive response of competency-based training. Competency-based training currently has a strangle hold on the TAFE sector and education has become a process…

All across the country, critical educators are fighting on dozens of fronts, searching in both form and content for a coherent pedagogical expression that captures their opposition to what they perceive as major developments of world-historical importance: the pandemic of economic globalization; United States geopolitical imperialism and the rabid…