The "harmony model" of school administration is discussed and critiqued. (MM)

Employed a stakeholder framework to examine the changing salience levels of a state business group as it tried to shape educational policy during a 5-year period of intense state-level reform. Using case study methods, researchers address the relationship between the changing salience of the group and the dynamic environment of educational policy…

This article examines California's system of school governance. The article's overarching concern is how state structures and policies support or constrain the capacity of schools to deliver an adequate and equal education. Specifically, I address the following questions: Who is responsible for ensuring that the state's schools have adequate…

This article explores the role of the public in California's educational accountability system. Drawing on a review of state policy and case studies of two school communities, it examines whether California's accountability system draws on and supports an informed and engaged public. The analysis points to a disconnect between a rhetoric that…

This article briefly characterizes a "deliberative democratic" approach to program evaluation, recounts its application to the evaluation of school choice policy in the Boulder Valley School District, and describes the results and recommendations of the evaluation. It then assesses the evaluation in terms of its role in stimulating…

Interviewed key stakeholders and observed classes at California single sex schools to investigate how context mediated policy. As educators responded to California's single sex academic legislation, they designed schools and used resources to address each community's needs. Actions and idealogies of individuals in each setting (classroom, school,…

Examines the early history of state student assessment, describing how an accountability model for state testing failed between 1865-1965 and stressing the role of institutionalized clusters of normative and causal ideas in educational policy making. These policy frameworks define core principles that nimate state action, legitimate aims served by…

Background/Context: Unlike the situation nationally where desegregation progress is faltering, the school district in Rock Hill, South Carolina, has recently undertaken measures to increase balance in pupil assignment despite considerable local opposition to these measures and the absence of a court order requiring the district to do so. Moreover,…

Background/Context: The analysis contained in this article was commissioned by the Social Science Research Council's Transitions to College project. Although the historical context and contemporary issues associated with English learners (ELs) and undocumented immigrant students are in many ways distinct, the project team strongly believed that…

This essay examines: (1) theoretical relations between legal decisions, conceptions of education, and educational policy; (2) the tradition of ignoring legal contexts of education, and how the one conception of education produced by the Supreme Court is garbled and confused; and (3) a new conceptualization designed to link the interests of…

In spite of current questions concerning the relevance, reliability, identity, focus, and utility of the study of educational policy and politics there is increased need for study in this area, particularly because of increasing applications of the approaches of political economists in this domain. (JMF)

This article explores how a revitalized public life promises to be far more effective than conventional school reform in bringing more equitable education policy. Participatory social inquiry stands in contrasts to the limited and mostly technical focus of equity reforms that began with Great Society policies in the 1960s and 1970s and that…

This article applies the logic of the improved school finance, arguing the need to understand how resources are used at the school and classroom levels. While California policies and most court cases have been seriously inadequate from this perspective, the recent case of Williams v. California provides new opportunities for equity since it…

A large number of community college students have difficulty with postsecondary-level reading, writing, and math demands, necessitating remedial education. A qualitative case study was conducted to investigate state and institutional practices for remediation in 15 community colleges selected for region, size, and urbanicity. The six states in…

This article discusses education for the rural masses as one of the emerging trends in education in developing countries. (MK)