Argues that analyses of education which assume a direct relation between the system of production and school operation typically overlook the state's sponsorship of schooling. Describes how the struggle between democracy and capitalism within the state affects the educational system. Focuses on the influence of social movements on equality in…

Politics of education in 1980s will be played out primarily at the state level. The task will be to maintain existing support levels, and advocates will have to provide hard evidence about the benefits of particular policy choices and about the larger social interests associated with public education. (CMG)

When seen as an ecology of games, reforming classroom instruction via government policy often appears less successful than policy makers envision. This study analyzes one midwestern reading reform by following games of the state, district, and classroom levels, showing how reform efforts are both interrelated and disconnected. The games'…

Educational reform in Finland shifted from 1960s welfare state ideology, which viewed education as an instrument of social justice and equal opportunity, to the 1980s neoliberal ideology of competition and individualism, to the economic depression of the early 1990s, which resulted in a new definition of educational equality. (Contains 20…

Replies to Crandall's claim that Finn had disrupted a decade of solid research in the Office of Educational Research and Improvement Office (OERI) regional educational laboratories. According to Finn, these labs have wasted taxpayers' money. Currently, states command school policy and finances, and key decision-makers are governors and…

Although research findings endorse abandonment of traditional skills-based views of literacy, governments are instituting models of literacy learning with psychometric measures and benchmarking. Literacy, learning, and teaching are being taken out of the hands of teachers. (SK)

Investigates Cyprus' utilization of higher education policy as compensatory legitimization. Argues that establishment of the University of Cyprus (following considerable political opposition and hesitation over the years) and the character of the state-based university, which is linked to the international community of scholarship, result from the…

Globalization and post-modernity are linked to changes in the nature of late capitalism and crises in the modern state. Neither offers much in practice to the much needed renewal of democracy, including in education. Indeed, both arguably contribute to a trend towards individualism, and a retreat from democratic engagement and visions of the…

Politicians, less interested in purity than in popularity, are generally wary of national standards. Yet a standards-based accountability system is the core component of NCLB, and in some ways it has made standards advocates victims of their own success. Now, many activists are agitating to cut back the role of Washington in education, and a…

This article takes Singapore, an emerging education hub, as a focal point from which to investigate its attempts to become a global city and knowledge-based economy. It outlines how discourses of the knowledge economy are used to rationalise particular policy interventions and the transnational education forms arising from them. It speculates on…

This article discusses how representations of individual discipline and risk-taking in mass media inform the broader public discourses about public education and the public sector generally. Such representations and narratives about individual discipline and risk-taking often function in mass media as moral imperatives of consumer culture. Such…

The policy and practice of school education in mainland China have changed in response to the political and economic reformations and opening-up of the late 1970s. This paper argues that, despite the introduction and emphasis on popular culture in some areas of school education, traditional Chinese culture and values continue to consolidate the…

The managing director of The Netherlands' National Foundation for Educational Research (Stichting Voor Onderzoek van het Onderwijs, or SVO) delineates the SVO's role in promoting educational research and describes the conditions affecting the SVO's effectiveness in pursuing its mission. Among the factors considered are financial constraints,…

Discusses the nature and dynamics of conservatism in relation to the politics of education. Argues that, because the state has replaced society and the workplace as the locus of class struggle, implementation of conservative educational and fiscal policies face barriers created by popular resistance and failures within the New Right itself. (KH)

Despite the budget cuts and some consolidation of programs by the Reagan administration, basic programs are still intact. Congress has been, and remains, in charge of educational policy. (MLF)