Discusses the role of the national values of efficiency, choice, and equity in the adoption and implementation of the federal education block grant program and the negative effects on school desegregation. Urges policymakers to consider policy goals, and not just policy instruments, when considering future proposals. (FMW)

Efforts to revolutionize the child welfare system must consider social trends and forces. Encouraging trends that child welfare reformers might be able to harness include biotechnology, availability of medical care, gender equality, awareness of parenting skills, and service sector growth. Discouraging trends include increasing rate of divorce and…

The National Institute for Curriculum Development (SLO) in the Netherlands originated in 1975 to evaluate and redesign existing curricula and to coordinate programs at various levels. The SLO Humanities department, which includes the subjects of geography, history, and economics, has been engaged in curriculum development in lower vocational and…

This report examines how students choose colleges and how the college choices of students differ by race and ethnicity across four subgroups of students: African American, Asian American, Chicano, and Caucasian. It is proposed that students conceptualize their college choices differently based on how they perceive their anticipated college…

The social context within which home schooling takes place is described, and the ideological frameworks and contexts within which parents (most of them fundamentalist Christians) make schooling decisions are examined. Research involved participant observation and interviews with 16 home schooling families (13 families self-labeled…

This paper describes the changes in the science and mathematics curriculum in Soviet classrooms since the 1984 reforms and the "glasnostic" climate. The first section discusses the trends in Soviet education including the humanist, national, moral and materialistic trends. The second section examines variations in the science curriculum…

This paper presents a historical overview of the gradual shift in the moral and philosophical foundations of American society as reflected in the content of textbooks. Working from the premise that textbooks mirror changing social values, the paper cites various studies that trace the trend, over the past 200 years, away from an emphasis on…

The study examined the ways in which status cultures and organizational environments influence high school students' college decision-making. Interviews were conducted with 12 white female high school seniors from four northern California high schools (a low socio-economic status(SES)/low organization public school, a low-SES/high organization…

The administration of the Department of Education in Victoria (Australia) went through many organizational structural changes in the period 1970-1986. This paper describes the sequence of these changes, identifies the persons and more general social forces behind them, and details their major effects on various levels of the educational system.…