Education Sector commissioned an earlier version of this collection of essays in conjunction with a March 2012 event "Getting to 2014: The Choices and Challenges Ahead." This updated version includes new essays and a revised introduction. The aim of these essays is to present ideas, elicit feedback, and encourage productive dialogue…

Although educators have oversold schools' ability to cure social ills, they have undersold schools' capacity to provide a sound academic education for every child. Communities and political representatives must be mobilized to ensure that ignorance of the rich academic disciplines underlying U.S. culture and intellectual progress for the past 200…

The federal government is devoting millions of dollars to charter and voucher programs that currently require parents to abandon regular public schools. The goal of the authors of The School Choice Hoax is to expose the misleading hyperbole that has been driving the school choice movement and to show how charter schools can become more effective…

This paper addresses educational reform as it affects dropouts, minorities, diverse cultures, training programs, and community-based education. Effective dropout-prevention models are presented that address the needs of at-risk populations. The author states that much dropout prevention and reclamation takes place off of school district campuses…

A school-district audit in Florida highlights the stellar program and results at Polk County's Inwood Elementary School. Principal Sue Buckner demands that parents, stepparents, grandparents, uncles, aunts, and neighbors participate in Inwood's success. A sidebar summarizes the audit procedures and findings. (MLF)

The National Governors' Association Task Force on Readiness presented policy recommendations to help at-risk children prepare for school and meet new educational standards. Suggested state initiatives include various outreach and preschool programs for low-income families, assistance with basic skills and teacher training, and incentives and…

The Research for Better Schools Urban Education Project provides a different framework from current education-reform efforts for restructuring urban schools and improving educational quality. This volume organizes a set of invited papers according to the Urban Learner Framework themes of cultural diversity and learning, unrecognized abilities and…

This document addresses the difficulties of urban education, particularly relating to inner cities that contain immigrant and minority students, and argues that schools contribute to the problems of today's urban youth and that schools must do a better job of educating students. It recognizes that schools are burdened by the urban environment but…

This publication is a 60-item catalog listing of curricula, teaching guides, and other resources for teachers that focus on developing and promoting pedagogy, resources, and cross-cultural understanding for social and economic justice in the Americas. Many of the offerings particularly address racism and issues in Central America and South…

This paper argues that present service delivery models for Chapter 1 students have questionable effectiveness and calls for collaborative consultation between teachers of Chapter 1 and regular programs to better serve this population of at-risk students. This system change requires defining collaborative consultation, developing a collaborative…

This document contains 21 papers from an international workshop designed to facilitate the exchange of ideas concerning the use of information technology in teacher education among experts from Central, Eastern, and Western Europe. The papers include: (1) "Communication and Information Technologies as Change Agents" (Jef Moonen); (2)…

Societal changes of the past three decades call for a fundamental change in the structure of the educational system and in the culture of schooling. Disadvantaged African Americans, Native Americans, and Latinos, in particular, historically have suffered from the cultural misalignment of home, school, and community. The reform of educational…

A college professor and former professional football player, a university athletics director, and a sports sociologist offer their perspectives on the role of college sports in providing disadvantaged students with access to higher education. Issues discussed include the history of race and professional sports, colleges' responsibilities to…

This document is a resource guide intended to assist those serving urban youth and adults in vocational education. The first section lists field-representative publications in the areas of urban education reform, dropout prevention, teen parents, transitions, and support services/programs for adults; general literature; and additional resources.…

This comparative study explored community influences on leadership and educational reform in representative school districts located in low socioeconomic class, culturally diverse communities. The study compared outcomes of one state's efforts to educate disabled preschool children (ages 3-5) in school districts in low socioeconomic settings with…