Background/Context: Recent research has shown the importance of professional development for teacher learning and has documented the qualities that make professional development effective for improved instruction and student achievement. But there is little research to suggest how the policy environment shapes teachers' choices to participate in…

Background/Context: Policy documents such as Title I of the No Child Left Behind Act [NCLB] (2001) direct schools and school systems to funnel resources to students based on their socioeconomic and linguistic status, as well as according to performance on standardized measures of achievement. Such conversations in the US about serving "at…

The article explains briefly the provisions of Goals 2000, emphasizing its support of ongoing educational change at the state and local levels and state flexibility to develop diverse approaches to reform. To illustrate this flexibility, the article describes reform activities in Vermont, Delaware, and Oregon, and explains how these states are…

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…

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,…

Background/Context: Recent research indicates that social studies is being "squeezed" from the elementary curriculum as instructional time is shifted to language arts and mathematics in response to state testing and the federal No Child Left Behind Act, especially in schools serving poor students and students of color. However, less is…

Authors aim in this paper is to clarify technology's impact on learning and to illuminate the forces behind this impact, so that informed citizens may participate more fully in guiding a coherent evolution of the nation's strategic resources for learning. (Authors/CB)

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…

Background/Context: In recent years, state legislatures, state education departments, and advocacy groups in over 30 states have sponsored education adequacy studies, which aim to determine objectively the amount of funding needed to provide all students a meaningful opportunity for an adequate education. Not surprisingly, because of their growing…

Considers the evaluation provision of the Elementary and Secondary Act of 1965. (RK)

The authors discuss judicial and nonjudicial examples of reform attempts to make public education institutions more responsive to the individual preferences of students and parents. (MJB)

Drawing on memoranda and other materials in the federal archives, and interviews with more than a score of officials in the Johnson and Nixon administrations, this essay attempts to trace the development of the policy impact of the Coleman Report from its origins in 1964 to the end of Nixon's first term. (Author)

Research work of professional social scientists and women's rights groups has revealed the existence of sex discrimination in American higher education. (Author)

Recent changes in the age and race composition of the population and in educational governance indicate that the public will be more receptive to educational vouchers. These changes, points of agreement and disagreement, and the history of educational vouchers are described. (CJ)