In our response to Tilhou's article published last issue, "The Morning Meeting: Fostering a Participatory Democracy Begins with Youth in Public Education," we share and discuss ethnographic data from Morning Meetings in two U.S. elementary classrooms. We detail ways the democratic potential of Morning Meetings is being cultivated in…

The opponents and proponents of the alternative school movement are equally vociferous in enunciating their positions which leave all of us somewhat confused. Just what is the situation? In this article, Gerald Brunetti, an assistant professor of English education at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, describes the Southeast Alternatives…

This paper reports the experiences of staff, parents, governors and students at a secondary free school in the West Midlands of England in relation to the inclusion of students with special educational needs (SEN). The paper is based on a qualitative research project carried out at a school that opened in 2015, with the explicit aim of examining…

In an article written for The Clearing House in 1974 titled, "Alternative schools: Can they survive?", Gerald Brunetti described features of schools that served as an alternative to mainstream public education. He raised the question of whether or not such schools would continue to exist in the future. A search of the literature reveals…

There is a faltering sense of democracy in America's current political climate due to polarized opinions about leadership's decisions and antagonistic political parties. John Dewey (1916) proposed that education is the place to foster democracy, as schools can provide a platform to actively engage students in authentic democratic experiences that…

'Alternative education' encompasses a diversity of schooling types and organizations. "International Perspectives on Alternative Education" explores alternative forms of schooling from the position of academics, policy workers, and those working and studying in such schools across the world. The first-hand accounts by those working and…

In this article, four teachers reflect on what it means to work in a for-profit free school in Sweden. These narratives corroborate concerns about educational inequity and academic standards within the free school system. Equally, they reveal how teachers struggle to negotiate a professional identity within a competitive school market where social…

After the revolution in 1918, many reformist teachers were convinced that they could put into practice their dreams of a free and independent school in a democratic republic. Four state schools in Hamburg became anti-authoritarian school communities, in which teachers, parents and students experimented with revolutionary concepts of education. For…

What should be the continuing role of founders in schools supporting self-directed learning? To answer this, the founders' views of two North American schools for self-directed learners will be compared. One school is exam-focused and private; the other is, test-free and public. The founders of both schools have comparable beliefs regarding the…

The recent progress of "co-operative schools" both confirms and disrupts many assumptions surrounding contemporary compulsory schooling. The term itself refers to an eclectic array of schools, both primary and secondary, of which there were, by June 2012, almost 300 in England that have adopted co-operative values, in terms of…

This paper presents the results of an analysis of the admissions criteria used by the first two waves of secondary Free Schools in England. The type of criteria and their ranked order is explored and their potential impact on the school composition is considered. The findings demonstrate the diversity of criteria being used by this new type of…

This article looks at the Coalition Government's recent White Paper and Education Bill whose chief effect will be to further destabilise the schools system in the United Kingdom. The new Bill stipulates that if a new school is needed in an area, proposals for an Academy or a Free School must be prioritised before any other bid can be considered.…

Bethpage Union Free School District in New York is a high-performing district by almost any current accountability measure. Yet administrators and teachers worried that they were not doing enough to prepare their students as critical thinkers for the 21st century. Inspired by the curriculum framework of the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, the…

In this guide to alternative education, the theory and practice of the "free school" movement is discussed from a pedagogical and political viewpoint. The current state of free schools is described and four major types of free schools are identified: Summerhillian, parent-teacher cooperative, free high schools, community elementary. The political…

This study reveals that John Dewey and his theory of education had an influence on the beginning of progressive education in Eretz Israel in the first and second decades of this century, even before it had influenced the kibbutz educational system--the communal way of life, and other schools in the Jewish labor movement in Israel. This influence…