This article provides a brief history of the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), including an analysis of the demographic shifts and the tensions between the African American and Korean American communities at the time of the Los Angeles riots in 1992. The article includes my own experiences teaching high school English during the…

Argues that most dropout prevention attempts have been hampered by the lack of an unbiased, coherent and easily accessible source of data on the total and at risk populations of young people. Provides preliminary data on several groups of students not characterized by traditional dropout descriptors. Offers recommendations for improvement in…

Migrant education still has not solved the challenge of families moving in and out of many school districts during a school year. Federal funding has lagged behind the number of children identified as eligible for migrant education programs. Describes a database for tracking the nation's migrant students and cites some effective state and local…

The purpose of this article is to comment on practice in the use of existing data bases in program evaluation and school improvement and to explore directions for increased and improved use. (BW)

Argues that an appropriate reform agenda for urban school districts would require reform characterized by the design of client-centered, authentic respectful organizations that build from the needs and interests of students, rather than the convenience of employers or conventions of traditional schooling. (SLD)

The paper, prepared as a background paper for a larger project on adult English as a Second Language (ESL), discusses a variety of issues and challenges in improving adult ESL services in the United States. An introductory section offers an overview of demographic and educational factors affecting the education of limited-English-proficient (LEP)…

This paper discusses implications of open enrollment polices for students with disabilities and for districts that gain or lose students with disabilities through transfer. An introductory section examines how open enrollment differs from other "choice" options and offers general arguments for and against open enrollment. The remainder of the…

This paper examines trends that are currently reshaping rural America and rural education. It reviews the debate about how best to improve rural school districts, suggesting that what is needed is a better understanding of the changing context in which this country's public school enterprise is taking place. The paper begins by reviewing the work…

Analysis by the Civil Rights Project has shown that the isolation of Latino and black students from white students in public schools has substantially increased since the l980s. These findings have been criticized recently in a report by the Mumford Center at the University at Albany, "Resegregation in American Public Schools? Not in the 1990s"…

This document is a request by the Kentucky Department of Education for state legislation to mandate services and provide new state funding for preschool children aged 3, 4, and 5, with handicaps. Preschool services would include special education (center, home-based, itinerant); speech, physical, and occupational therapies; and other related…

This federal policy statement outlines policy on provision of education to limited-English-speaking school children. First, it describes briefly the demographics of this population and the academic difficulties faced by them, and the recent federal initiative for broadened educational opportunity, America 2000: An Education Strategy. Then,…

This federal policy statement outlines policy on provision of education to limited-English-speaking school children. First, it describes briefly the demographics of this population and the academic difficulties faced by them, and the recent federal initiative for broadened educational opportunity, America 2000: An Education Strategy. Then,…

The problems, challenges, and opportunities of rural education are the focus of the fourteen speeches and nine workshops presented at the second annual conference on rural education, held February 1-2, 1979, in Des Moines, Iowa. Conference proceedings are presented in this newsletter in transcript or summary form. Speeches cover the topics of…

A study focusing on vocational education in the Atlanta schools reveals that while vocational education in the Atlanta public schools has a long history, full-fledged job training was quite late in coming to Atlanta's high schools. With the onset of desegregation in the mid-1960s, several new projects were initiated to enhance vocational education…