The purpose of this paper is to respond to Jonathan Boston's article, which outlined the findings of the Expert Advisory Group (2012), in which he singled out one policy change, the 1991 budget cuts to benefit levels, as being the major cause of one-quarter of New Zealand's children now living below the poverty line. In her response, Liz Gordon…

Campaign finance might seem like the exclusive province of political reporters, but there are many good reasons why authors should be paying attention--both in races for education positions and in other key races at the local, state, and federal levels with implications for education. Basic math is a necessary skill and familiarity with a…

The research reported in this article contributes new understanding of leadership in the context of change, by investigating how the views, values and professional practices of those in leadership roles were revealed, interplayed and changed during a period of turbulence in a school in England. The governors of the school proposed changing the…

A common observation on college campuses today is "students do not look up when walking on campus." It is often thought that such attachment to communication devices demonstrates a lack of connection to the "real world." This perspective exemplifies the need for faculty to connect with the "digital generation" and do…

After the Spring 2014 primaries, the Common Core State Standards were viewed as a political hot potato. As former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee said, "the Common Core has become toxic, I think it's radioactive…It has become an incredibly controversial topic on both the left and the right." Even so, the Common Core turned out to play a…

The author has never been frightened by the possibility of a candidate winning, as she was at the possibility of Trump becoming president. And now that he is president-elect, she has grave concerns about this nation's children and our future. In this article, she states her belief that it is time to mobilize in significant ways at all…

A university professor and high school ESL teacher, both based in Lincoln Nebraska, each write two short essays that detail implications of the Trump administration immigration policies for students, teachers, schools, and communities. The first two dispatches come from the transition period (after Trump won but while Obama still presided) while…

"Middle-class School Choice in Urban Spaces" examines government funded public schools from a range of perspectives and scholarship in order to examine the historical, political and economic conditions of public schooling within a globalized, post-welfare context. In this book, Rowe argues that post-welfare policy conditions are…

Secondary civics and government courses are often framed as a content area in which students learn about processes of government and ways of participating in a democratic society, as opposed to a discipline in which students use specific tools and ways of thinking that mimic those used by professionals within that discipline. In this article, we…

Background/Context: In "Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission (2009)," the U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way for corporations to spend unlimited amounts of money to influence citizens' decisions about candidates and issues that will appear on election ballots. More important, however, for democratic educators, the ruling…

Political institutions provide basic building blocks for understanding and comparing political systems. Yet, students often struggle to understand the implications of institutional choice, such as electoral system rules, especially when the formulas and calculations used to determine seat allocation can be multilevel and complex. This study brings…

Sarah Black wanted to remedy Year 9's lack of knowledge about nineteenth-century politics. With just five lessons to work with, she decided to devise a sequence on Gladstone and Disraeli, shaping the sequence with an enquiry question that invited argument about change and continuity. Black analyses the status and function of different layers of…

It is not often that Supreme Court watchers agree; however, right now, it seems that most agree on one thing: the Supreme Court term that started in October 2013 is going to be a blockbuster. The docket over the last couple of years has had more than its fair share of headline-grabbing cases, from gay marriage to Obamacare to the Voting Rights…

On January 20, 2009, Dr. Manmohan Singh, the prime minister of India, became the leader of the free world. The free world's attention was focused elsewhere: Senator Barack Obama, who on that day became President Barack Obama, quietly abdicated the role now taken up by Dr. Singh, having run an election campaign premised upon the ever-present but…

This article briefly overviews the likely future of education as planned after the 2015 Conservative election success. Although education was not a major item in election manifestos or in subsequent discussion, the Department for Education claims that it is rolling out one of the most ambitious education reform movements in the world. How the…