Questions of educational adequacy and school spending have long been a point of contention in school reform. Amid the recent economic turmoil and gaping state budget shortfalls, questions of whether court-ordered funding remedies have delivered--and why they have or have not--have taken on particular import. This forum offers two sharply different…

This paper is an exploratory study of Professor Don Jansiewicz's GAME of POLITICS (The Game) simulation. The course instructor employs The Game in his introductory American Politics class as a learning tool for better understanding the legislative-executive process. Our exploratory study used legislative-executive process questions as part of two…

Free speech concerns associated with collective bargaining become important when unions impose fair-share fees that charge nonmembers for costs associated with the benefits they receive through labor negotiations. When unions collect fair-share fees, those payments often support causes with which nonmembers and dissenting members disagree.…

This article discusses several strategies for building varied bases of influence within a college setting. These strategies include, providing opportunities for success, advocating and implementing good ideas, interacting with individuals on both the personal and non-personal levels, establishing support among marginal individuals, learning to…

This paper reports on a five-year study which explored the engagement of a group of long-term mentally ill adults in community provision in which they learned basic, expressive literacy. The research mapped points in the learning, writing and auto/biographic engagement where set identities were being troubled, and frisson created in the challenge…

This study explores the influence of the 1994 tax reform on intraprovincial inequality in financing basic education. The empirical analysis finds that the reform has decreased inequality in general, suggesting that the center may attain its policy goal through centralizing its relative fiscal capability and increasing the intergovernmental…

The goal of Education for All (EFA) is in jeopardy, and the cause is widely perceived to be a lack of political will. But we lack an accurate definition of political will. In this article, I offer a definition that determines beforehand whether a government will have political will. In contrast to current academic work and popular discourse, which…

This article will focus on an event in the educational history of Wales in the 1980s which still impacts both on school practice and on thinking about concepts of Welsh identity. That event was the creation of the History Committee for Wales which was charged with devising a history curriculum for Welsh schools in the wake of the 1988 Education…

This article analyzes the implications of a particular conception of social justice in education for the policies that have led to significant political controversies in contemporary communities in the United States. Many of these controversies have arisen from the collision between the increasingly multicultural reality in those communities and…

The civil rights movements involving skin tone, gender or gender orientation, disability, and other physiognomic features remain important in securing the legal rights of individuals to equal treatment and equal opportunities regardless of their personal characteristics of color, origin, gender, and so on. Unfortunately, these welcome civil rights…

In 2005, the UK government announced the development of a suite of employer-designed diplomas for 14-19 year olds linked to different industrial and commercial sectors. This article will reflect on some of the achievements and challenges of this major employer engagement initiative by drawing on three pieces of research: a review of Diploma…

This article presents a comparative study of the recent developments of the academic profession in European universities drawing on the results of a policy questionnaire. First, it outlines that the profession is highly diversified and hierarchical, with an unsolved gender issue. Second, it discusses the reasons behind its attractiveness, paying…

This article uses international comparisons to examine the ways in which national differences in educational philosophies and policies have affected trajectories through education for immigrant and second generation students and their succeeding socio-economic, civic and political integration. By looking at various settings such as classrooms,…

Using statistics, documentary evidence and commentary from academics and academic trades unions, this article analyses the key features of U.K. government policy towards higher education in England since 1979. The focus is on England because the details of policy and policy implementation vary between the four nations of the U.K. My findings…

The report of the Panel on Fair Access to the Professions, chaired by Alan Milburn, was published at the end of the summer. The report was the result of considerable investigation into the progress, or lack of it, of people from lower socio-economic groups in gaining access to professional jobs. It seems that this issue is one that all the main…