The First Amendment Schools project holds rich lessons in how to change school cultures into "laboratories of democracy"--as well as in how to increase the odds of success for any school reform effort. School reform programs of any sort need to make sure to build in sustainability, to provide ways to spread their lessons beyond the…

The No Child Left Behind Act has had a pervasive effect on American education in its drive to bring about improvement in student achievement through assessment and accountability. In its standards-based approach to reform, measurement by standardized tests is everything. In this article, the author discusses the issue of private school…

The Supreme Court's controversial "community standards" ruling in "Miller v. California" (1973) states that for materials to be judged obscene, they no longer need to be "utterly without redeeming social value," but must lack serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value, and that the question of…