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…

In Italy, the National Evaluation System (SNV), encompassing both internal and external accountability components, is designed not only to hold school actors accountable but also to stimulate innovation and change in pedagogical practices. Nevertheless, existing literature presents inconclusive and contradictory findings regarding the effects and…

The white middle-class parents who chose to send their children to urban comprehensives largely rejected engaging in the usual competitiveness for educational success. Nevertheless the parents in our study still found themselves wittingly or otherwise captured by that same discourse. Their children are high achievers and are regarded as a valuable…

By the time youngsters reach high school in the United States, the achievement gap is immense. Some remarkable inner-city schools, however, are showing that the achievement gap can be closed, even at the middle and high school level, if poor minority kids are given the right kind of instruction. In this article, the author features six schools…

An examination of the literature on the characteristics of at-risk students largely cites demographics, socio-economic factors and minority status as identifying factors (DeRidder, 1988; Green and Scott, 1995; Peng, Lee, and Walberg, 1992; Rodriguez, 1997). According to the National Center for Education Statistics (1994), minority students of low…