This article explores school and community leaders' beliefs about standards-based reform and the purposes of local schooling in a single rural community in the western United States. The study used interviews of 11 community and school leaders in the community. Participants engage in a balancing act between serving local interests and satisfying…

Federal standards established in 1997 allow respondents to select multiple-race categories. These new standards changed the single-race subgroup definitions that the government has required since 1977. Meta-analysis, research on long-term assessment trends, and other research involving historical comparisons must account for the definitional…

This is the first in a yearlong series that examines the implementation of Perkins in the states. Several changes were made to the specific performance indicators that states and local programs will have to report on under the 2006 Perkins Act. At the secondary level, academic attainment will now have to be measured by the academic assessments a…

This paper describes the impetus for creating the Expanding Opportunities Interagency Inclusion Initiative and achievements to date in identifying and implementing effective and efficient inclusion strategies in the participating states. In March 2004, the Child Care Bureau (CCB) (renamed the Office of Child Care) and the Administration on…

America continues to make progress in meeting its high school dropout challenge. Leaders in education, government, nonprofits and business have awakened to the individual, social and economic costs of the dropout crisis and are working together to solve it. This year, all states, districts, and schools are required by law to calculate high school…

Widespread concern about the high and rising price of college makes timely data on tuition increases in historical context particularly important. The increase in average published tuition and fees at public four-year colleges and universities for the 2012-13 academic year is smaller than it has been in recent years--and below the average growth…

More than 800,000 American children spend some time in foster care each year, most because they have been victims of child abuse or neglect. The families of 3.5 million children are investigated or assessed for alleged maltreatment each year, and more than 900,000 children are determined to be victims--three-quarters of them neglected, and…

The present article deals with the crucial question: Can peace education facilitate change in the sociopsychological infrastructure that feeds continued intractable conflict and then how the change can be carried? Intractable conflicts still rage in various parts of the globe, and they not only cause local misery and suffering but also threaten…

With the dissemination of its Innovation Strategy in 2002, the Canadian government further solidified its commitment to a knowledge-based national competitiveness strategy. Through the unfolding of a multi-million dollar Workplace Skills Strategy (WSS) agency, and the launch of two research agencies, the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) and…

This paper analyzes the roots and implications of conflict between the conduct of science and government predilections in the United States, including the security state and neoconservative control of Washington. Three major conflicts are discussed: the emergence of new security and secrecy regimes that seek control of science; religiously derived…

The purpose of this paper was to analyze the court case Pontiac v. Spellings, a legal challenge to the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act filed in 2005. The methodology was to examine and analyze the briefs filed and the court decisions to analyze the legal arguments made by the parties to the lawsuit. The results were that the U.S. Circuit Court for…

This article describes national trends in outcomes of the vocational rehabilitation (VR) program, with a focus on adults with developmental disabilities during the period of 1995 to 2005. Findings show that the VR program has made substantial progress in excluding extended employment from the array of possible employment closures. Efforts are…

The quality of the teacher workforce is a subject of perennial concern in many developed countries. In the United States, through the "No Child Left Behind" (NCLB) Act, the federal government has a mandate for reform of teacher education that is unprecedented in its scale. Essentially the Act demands that every teacher of core academic…

In most countries of the world, higher education is highly subsidized by the public sector. The subsidy is a result of the role of higher education sector on the economy and good governance of the nations. Enrolment into higher institutions of learning is quite low in Africa compare to other continents of the world due to the continent's low and…

As a scholar/practitioner who has been involved for more than forty years in efforts to improve urban schools and districts, the author is struck by the confluence of factors that seem to be coming together to support this major new effort to rescue the neediest students in urban America. Is it possible that the idealism of the 1960s is finally…