Provide your students with handwritten letters from three young students to then U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin, written a few months prior to the first celebration of Earth Day on April 22, 1970. These primary source historical documents can be a part of upper elementary students' exploration of civic activism in the service of…

A prevailing notion among higher education leaders is that public relations and marketing efforts must be intensified to boost legislative support for colleges and universities. However, this view fails to consider whether the academy might increase its standing among legislators and the general public by becoming more productively engaged in…

Since the 1970s, American governors have become increasingly active in education politics. Where they once told state education chiefs to "make me the best education governor ever," they now demand control of state boards of education, push for state control of school funding, and urge statewide standards for teacher evaluation. This…

Interviews with state legislators from Wisconsin (D. Bezruki), Massachusetts (T. P. Kennedy), and Virginia (P. Leone) illustrate the roles that evaluation is playing in the current state budget crisis. The influence of evaluation data appears largely specific to individual programs rather than systematically applied to the budgeting process. (SLD)

In January 2004, college students from postsecondary institutions across Wisconsin were invited to join US Representatives Tammy Baldwin and Mark Green at The Johnson Foundation's Wingspread Conference Center in Racine, Wisconsin. The purpose of the discussion was to engage students' attitudes regarding politics, and their understanding of…

Henry Barnard was "one of the men who revitalized the American common-school system", and as such, he is clearly worthy of a biography. Not only was his service a noted one to elementary education, but as college president and as the organizer of the United States Bureau of Education his activity also touched other parts of the country's…

This monograph and its companion, "Legislative Education Leadership in the States," portray the contemporary role of state legislators and map the structure of education leadership in terms of both the characteristics of influential legislators and staff and the nature of influence structures in state legislatures. This volume reports…