Black and white conflict is a by-product of a more basic problem: the failure of this society to develop a social system that enables all people to meet their basic human needs at a reasonable level. Until this is done, we will not be able to move beyond black and white. The underlying problem is related to a sudden acceleration of human history…

This discussion places the ten years of the war on poverty in perspective and, on the basis of both the experiment in policy intervention and some recent trends, speculates on the nature and course of social policy over the next decade. The basis of and motivations for the war on poverty are reviewed as the primary concern of the first part of…

Reviews "The Politics of School Reform 1870-1940" by Paul Peterson, and "Power and the Promise of School Reform: Grassroots Movements During the Progressive Era" by William J. Reese. Notes that these two studies serve to bring politics, and political variables, back into the debate over educational policymaking, but are…

Results of a 1984 national survey of chief liberal arts academic officers (department heads, deans, and chief academic officers) are used to examine aspects of administrator careers and behavior, including grant administration, job satisfactions and frustrations, and career success. (MSE)

Analysis of instructional strategies associated with interaction-based teaching in a graduate course in higher education pinpoints critical incidents in the course's unfolding and resolution of testing, grading, and evaluation problems and their resolution. Teachers must be ready to share course control and leadership with the students. (MSE)

Questions administrators need to answer when selecting or evaluating a computerized personnel and/or payroll information system cover the type of system, resources for purchasing and/or developing it, activities needed and used for, its use, and issues of responsibility. (MSE)

Implications of the growth of university-based contract research are examined, including moral and ethical issues, legal aspects, ownership of research results, staff rights, researcher status, publication, authority, responsibility, social justice, and conflicts between teaching and research. Eleven suggestions for successful contract research…

Growing school systems in Montreal and Toronto (Canada) between 1861 and 1881 offered radically different opportunities to men and women. Educational administrators developed bureaucratic modes of organization chiefly with male aspirations for power and social mobility in mind. Women were hired to fill the bottom ranks or were ignored altogether.…

This paper analyzes rural school resistance to a federally funded intervention program aimed at increasing college attendance and success among students from historically marginalized groups. One such program ("Start Up") is currently being implemented in a geographically isolated South Carolina school district with high minority…

This paper presents a contextual framework for analysis of Hispanic leadership in higher education and reviews the demographics of Hispanic college presidents, their challenges, and related leadership issues. It can be argued that Hispanic leadership in higher education brings a socially marginalized experience that, by emphasizing social justice,…

The politics of education is driven by a complex interrelationship among politicians, private foundations, teachers' unions, special-interest groups, school administrators, boards of education, courts, and the "knowledge industry." Chapter 1 focuses on the major actors in the politics of education, and chapter 2 analyzes the…

In North Carolina, legislation giving health insurance to children of modest-income working families was won because a broad coalition of over 100 organizations got the attention of lawmakers. Because all children benefitted, rural children benefited, but a few groups pushing for health insurance for just rural children would not have gotten their…

This paper examines the mentoring relationship between preservice and practicing teachers, noting the importance of using a formal agreement to enhance the process. This agreement helps avoid the problem of conflicting expectations between the two parties. Information for the paper comes from case studies derived from mentoring student teachers…

This paper describes the development and implementation of the Practice-Based Professional Improvement Project, a teacher-led high school improvement project that has improved academic success at several inner-city high schools in Nashville, Tennessee. The project believes that: teachers are key to school improvement; most teachers sincerely want…

The difficulties encountered in developing an innovative teacher education program, emphasizing educational equity, are analyzed. Fluctuating membership in the program development group and an overly open decision-making process led to conflict over who would make decisions and what problems would be addressed. (IS)