The process of selecting a chief state school officer (CSSO) can be a significant means of allocating policymaking power in state educational governance. This paper examines the role of the chief state school officer and explains how that role is influenced by the selection process. Four selection models are described, along with the advantages…

This study of evaluation utilization identified organizational, political, and practical arrangements facilitating the wide use of "The Interim Report Evaluation" in policymaking for California's Early Childhood Education Program. In a program fraught by tensions, where evaluations had been political tools, this evaluation was special.…

Presents excerpts from two interviews, conducted in 1979 and 1995, with John Coe, a British primary education specialist and advocate for child-centered education. As primary education has veered toward a national curriculum and assessments, school choice, locally managed schools, and a strong, politically charged accountability element, teachers…

The progress of postapartheid curriculum in South Africa's universities is examined, beginning with examination of the apartheid legacy in higher education and proceeding to the politics of changes in national educational policy. It is concluded that, despite efforts to change policy at the national level, universities have done little to…

Successes and failures in Polish higher education reform since the fall of communism are outlined. Successes include legal support for reform, access to higher education, new schools, international collaboration, enhancement of academic careers. Problems include inadequate structure for science, little structural change in higher education,…

The University of California Board of Regents' decision to end racial preferences in hiring, contracting, and admissions represents the most dramatic scaling-back of affirmative action policy in American higher education. The highly controversial decision is accompanied by a policy of increased outreach to low-income and otherwise disadvantaged…

Presents ideas addressed at a discussion of the changing culture of the university attended by 17 academics from diverse disciplines, who have recently spoken or written against the "politically correct" academic trends. Discussion, based on the transcript, considers why democratic institutions were being undermined in the name of…

The current state of education in Russia strongly correlates with the socioeconomic crisis, which negatively impacts education. Responsibility for education falls to the state and other social institutions, which form a system of education. The many laws, decrees, and rules about education have had little impact on practice. School democratization…

In the fall of 1972, as Michael Hughes began his junior year at East High School in Phoenix, Arizona, he was one of only a few American Indians in the school. Of the approximately 2,500 students, only 35--or about 1.4 percent--were Indian. To most teachers, administrators, and even fellow students, he and the other Native students in this large,…

Recent analyses of the linkages between policy analysis and politics suggests that contemporary focus on the first had been poorly attenuated to the theoretical needs of the second. This paper specifies the kinds of research in educational politics that should ensue if the politics-of-education field is to become less oriented to specific policies…

This report examines the problem of the pervasiveness of politics in today's higher education, particularly in the humanities, and argues the need for college and university campuses to return to seeking the truth and telling it rather than straying into the position that the aim of education is for students to become politically transformed. Too…

The Assisted Places Scheme introduced by England's Conservative government in 1980 provides for the government to make up the difference between the cost of private secondary school tuition and the amount that eligible students can afford to pay (determined according to a sliding scale based on parent income). As a result, the private schools can…

This article offers a critique of Eduardo Padron's administration at Miami-Dade Community College (MDCC) in Florida. Padron has been district president at MDCC since 1995. Almost immediately after his appointment, Padron moved to centralize the school's administration. He fired employees en masse, cut and consolidated sports programs, and began…

The history of Moroccan universities established in the French colonial tradition is reviewed briefly, and two types of gains in academic freedom and autonomy in recent years are discussed: those made collectively by universities in relation to the central political authority, and those made by individual institutions in relation to each other.…

An educator of special education teachers reflects on his childhood, the current conservative political movement as it affects people who are poor or disabled, the current inclusionary reform movement in special education, and how to best serve youth with emotional or behavioral disorders. General education is seen as inherently inadequate to…