Bureaucracies are often perceived as inflexible, impersonal, hierarchical, and too devoted to rules and red tape. But David Labaree makes a case for these characteristics being a positive in the world of public education. U.S. schools are built within a liberal democratic system, where the liberal pursuit of self-interest is often in tension with…

Kappan editor Rafael Heller interviews Annette Lareau about her research into different experiences of childhood and family life. In her observations of families of different social classes, she learned that upper-middle-class families approach parenting as an act of "concerted cultivation" requiring ongoing attention, making them more…

Students in Room 501 were exploring and negotiating their lives as transnational citizens. In a globalized world of instantaneous information and communication, Latino students are shaping, morphing, and evolving into a new generation. This study highlights one group of students who were aspiring toward middle class, which is not the typical…

Describes increasing conflict between the demands of the inner-city population and expectations of the working and middle class. (JF)

Since the days of the reform movements of the 1980s and 1990s, standardized testing has increased greatly in the public schools. The problem has become particularly acute in the wake of the testing mandated for accountability under the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act. States simply can not afford to jeopardize their federal funding. This article…

Examines alternative plans for desegregating schools in a metropolitan context. (JF)

In the June "Kappan," Marc Tucker summarized the "Tough Choices" report, the sequel to a report issued in 1990 by a predecessor group, which attributed the nation's low productivity growth in the 1970s and 1980s to inadequate American schools. The authors critiqued it and charged Tucker with trying to stampede policy makers into adopting reckless…

Rebuts Alfie Kohn's article "Only for My Kid: How Privileged Parents are Undermining School Reform" in the April 1998 "Kappan." Kohn expects the author to pay a fortune for a home in an affluent community so his kids can get violence-prevention training and sing "Kumbaya" in a mainstreamed classroom. Earning the right…

As presently conceived and implemented, some compensatory education programs appear to be intellectually, democratically, professionally, and philosophically unsound. Some program administrators seem not to have considered the possibility that their programs amount to an imposition of a middle-class value system upon a group of people who have…

Significant desegregation will occur only when minority group children are immersed in middle class norms and values which will require the reorganization of the education Establishment. (Author)

Suggests that humans differ from other living organisms in the ability to exercise learned behavior and the individual will, which may allow people to make the changes in values necessary to survive on this planet. (DW)

The educational and civil rights issues underlying the conflict between State education standards and Amish parochial schools. (RA)

Data from a 1994 longitudinal survey showed that parents' availability for school participation varied widely, depending on income and vacation benefits. At Princeton University, Alan Kruger and Diane Whitman concluded that smaller classes have greater effects on minority students' progress and college entrance-exam enrollment than on whites. (MLH)

Offers generalization about the militant young and the implications for education and society in the future. (MF)