The present article deals with the crucial question: Can peace education facilitate change in the sociopsychological infrastructure that feeds continued intractable conflict and then how the change can be carried? Intractable conflicts still rage in various parts of the globe, and they not only cause local misery and suffering but also threaten…

A Washington research group is raising questions about the wisdom of the U.S. Department of Education's favored strategies for turning around the lowest-performing schools with stimulus funding, saying that its research shows that similar federal approaches to school restructuring have not been effective. The questions raised by the new study were…

By explicitly naming education as one of three top priority areas in his first joint congressional address and in his first federal budget proposal, President Barack Obama is putting considerable political weight--and even more money--behind the agenda he laid out during his campaign. Certain themes he struck in the February 24…

With the dissemination of its Innovation Strategy in 2002, the Canadian government further solidified its commitment to a knowledge-based national competitiveness strategy. Through the unfolding of a multi-million dollar Workplace Skills Strategy (WSS) agency, and the launch of two research agencies, the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) and…

An analysis of spending trends that is designed to discourage policy makers' focus on finding new revenue rather than reining in spending suggests that the model for financing colleges has reinforced educational inequities and failed to increase the rate at which students graduate. According to the analysis, "serious fault lines" in the current…

One of the most colorful examples of the reflection of identities in heritage sites involves the historical U.S.-Native relationship. In exploring the topic of U.S.-Native memories, this article focuses on the cultural identities represented at the Horseshoe Bend National Military Park (HBNMP), a heritage site that commemorates the Creek War of…

After-school learning, summer learning, and family involvement in learning are major predictors of children's development, educational achievement, and school success. The United States will not achieve its national goals of equal educational opportunity without addressing the importance of and inequities in out-of-school learning opportunities.…

This paper analyzes the roots and implications of conflict between the conduct of science and government predilections in the United States, including the security state and neoconservative control of Washington. Three major conflicts are discussed: the emergence of new security and secrecy regimes that seek control of science; religiously derived…

"Straight A's: Public Education Policy and Progress" is a biweekly newsletter that focuses on education news and events both in Washington, DC and around the country. The following articles are included in this issue: (1) Congress Punts Education Funding Decision to 2009: Education and Other Domestic Priorities Frozen While Defense and Homeland…

The American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) is the national indicator of customer evaluations of the quality of goods and services available to U.S. residents. Since 1994, it has served as a uniform, cross-industry/government measure of customer satisfaction. A total of 10 groups, composed of eight program offices, EDFacts Coordinators, and…

The purpose of this paper was to analyze the court case Pontiac v. Spellings, a legal challenge to the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act filed in 2005. The methodology was to examine and analyze the briefs filed and the court decisions to analyze the legal arguments made by the parties to the lawsuit. The results were that the U.S. Circuit Court for…

In an ongoing debate about the relative costs of the federal government's direct and guaranteed student loan programs, some budget experts and private lenders have argued for the use of "market cost" estimates. They assert that official government cost estimates for federal student loans differ from what private entities would likely charge…

In this article, the author discusses the problems facing Ontario's community colleges' faculty as educators whose "craft" is to teach. The author contends that the problems educators face haven't really been the focus of the three constituencies that have dominated the conversations about the colleges: (1) college management; (2) the…

For the past two years, accreditation has been the focus of attention by the current Secretary of Education, Margaret Spellings, and others who believe that accreditors, in the words of Spellings' Commission on the Future of Higher Education, should "make performance outcomes, including completion rates and student learning, the core of their…

U.S. postsecondary education has enjoyed a strong history for more than 350 years but at the present time faces uncertainties never experienced in the past. American higher education enjoys the greatest diversity of students in its history and grants degrees to an ever-increasing number of students. Accountability for student learning outcomes as…