Presents observations and lessons drawn from two years of Kentucky school reform. Implementing the Kentucky School Reform Act of 1990 teaches that reforming schools also requires addressing the ways in which communities raise their children. Community work, with parent and student participation, improves family conditions and political decision…

Illustrates the importance of studying educational policy in the making with instances of multicultural history-social studies curriculum policymaking in California and New York in the context of movements for national standards and assessments and possibly a national curriculum. Attempts by neo-nativists to influence policymaking are discussed.…

The origins and content of President Clinton's plan for the reinvention of the federal government are described, and its impacts on evaluation are considered. An overall positive impact is expected, not withstanding initial disruptions through the reduction of midlevel management evaluation and changes in the roles of federal, state, and local…

Explores the political and social reasons behind the denial of affirmative action at the University of California and analyzes the probable impact and human rights effects of the policy. Because the state has not allocated sufficient funds to improve elementary and secondary education for Blacks and Latinos, their numbers will inevitably decline…

Many private schools accepting public and private voucher funding use instructional materials that transmit profoundly conservative values. Content of texts produced by A Beka Books and Bob Jones University Press is virtually identical to materials produced and disseminated by the Christian Right and other conservative groups. (Contains 42…

California was a pioneer in new forms of student assessment through a system entitled the "California Learning Assessment System" (CLAS). For different reasons, several interest groups objected to the CLAS, which has been discontinued. The history of the CLAS program sheds light on the future of testing policy in California and perhaps…

The development of educational computing in the last two decades has been largely uncritical and the field is dominated by technocentric approaches. With few notable exceptions, sociologists of education have not directly addressed educational computing. As a result, the social, political and cultural origins and implications of educational…

Issues emerging from recent Australian college mergers include: their necessity, forced by federal government; realism of the savings objectives; problems of merging institutions with separate traditions and missions; achieving new institutional identities; optimum strategies for integrating organizational structures and policies; and effects on…

Outlines the history of the Reverend Jesse Jackson's involvement in urban school reform and focuses particularly on Project PUSH-EXCEL: his positive self-image program for Black children. Reviews negative criticisms that have been made against Jackson but concludes that his efforts are both positive and necessary. (KH)

A historical and qualitative analysis of a northern urban de facto segregated school is presented that explains the unique factors of the school's history that led to the maintenance of the school today. The focus is on the school's context, its historical and present-day leadership, and its past and present teachers. In considering the school's…

As educational systems evolved from consumption or culture-transmission devices to systems of investment in individuals, the rationale for public expenditure on education should have undergone a concomitant radical transformation. Instead, investment in many countries is still guided by political, cultural, and consumption criteria, resulting in…

Using public school reform efforts in Chicago (Illinois), this essay attempts to provide a theoretical framework for understanding how the educational governance system responds to political and social value conflicts and discusses how opposing interests have periodically compromised rather than resolved these conflicts. (SLD)

Discusses ways of approaching text and textbooks as embodiments of a larger process of cultural politics, focusing on the analysis of the relationships involved in their production, contexts, use, and reading. Newer forms of analysis that emphasize the politics of how students actually create meanings around texts are reviewed. (SLD)

Dialog between the authors addresses multiculturalism from a critical perspective and reminds educational researchers that research is always about political representation. It is argued that researchers may have inadvertently created the populations they study because of the controlling cultural mode of their own research. (SLD)

Argues that the political aspect of the Fulbright Exchange Program for college faculty has enhanced its academic effectiveness. The program's context, history, and method are described, and the Netherlands program is discussed in detail, noting particularly its transformation since 1947. Repoliticization of the Fulbright program in coordinated…