Originally founded in 1861 as the Teachers' Association of Canada West (TACW), the Ontario Educational Association (OEA) was a fixture on the education scene in Ontario for one hundred twenty-five years until its dissolution on November 28, 1985. This article traces the early development and maturation of the OEA to focus on its involvement in…

In California, a half century after the landmark "Serrano v. Priest" decision overturning the state's public school finance system because of the inequality between the state's school districts, a significant amount of wealth-based inequality in per-pupil expenditures continues to exist. One of the sources of this inequality is the…

Background/Context: This study deals with an intersection of educational history, queer history, and labor history involving the activities of lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) teachers. The history of LGBT teachers, particularly before the 1990s, has been addressed by only a handful of historians. The prior research most relevant to this study is…

Conflicts are an inevitable phenomenon within organizations. The organization of interest in this study is the elementary school and the conflicts that may emerge into its context. There are many types of conflicts and their consequences vary; there are positive consequences, but also negatives ones. When teachers are to express their opinions on…

Recent policies in Ethiopia put students at the heart of school improvement through structures for peer leadership and school-level consultation, evaluation and decision-making. This article draws on an ethnographic study of a government school in Tigray, Ethiopia, to explore how the participation and influence of students is achieved and mediated…

Academic freedom has long been a sacrosanct principle in higher education; however, the same rights to intellectual autonomy have rarely been afforded K-12 practitioners. In times of national political crisis, the abilities of teachers to engage students in the crucial debates about contemporary public policy issues have been stretched to the…

Public education today faces a troubling set of challenges, including declining enrollment, staffing shortages, and polarized communities, with school boards at the center of broader political debates. How did we arrive at this current state? This study--described here and, in more detail, in a related report--of seven California school districts…

Almost daily, media headlines draw attention to students struggling academically and emotionally from interrupted learning, high student absenteeism, declining enrollment, teacher and leader burnout, staffing shortages, polarized communities, and school boards at the center of broader political debates. How did we arrive at this current state of…

In this article, Jeremy Sullivan explores the history of teacher evaluations in Montgomery County, Maryland. He describes how, over the course of three decades, the Montgomery County Education Association (MCEA) established itself as a strong and powerful professional association and leveraged its power to institutionalize a more collaborative…

The academic achievement of children is a national concern. Thus, PTA focuses not only on individual schools, but also on the communities they serve. One of the innovative approaches to community involvement in education is the community PTA. Community PTAs are not tied to a single school, but instead offer membership and involvement to various…

This articles discusses the unification of Alabama's black and white Parent-Teacher Associations from 1954 to 1971. Alabama was one of the last PTA state units to desegregate in the late 1960s, along with Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Texas. It was also the only state in which white members launched a successful…

The Department of Defense Education Activity (DoDEA) has begun the process of developing a new Community Strategic Plan (CSP) for school years 2012-13 through 2016-17. The first step in the development process was to conduct a wide-reaching and comprehensive environmental scan at the grassroots level to understand DoDEA stakeholders' concerns,…

This study examines the impact of the school accountability laws "No Child Left Behind" and Indiana's Public Law 221 on Superintendents' perception of their relationship with the Teachers' Union Leader in their mandatory discussion meetings. Both school accountability laws contain provisions for the Indiana's Department of Education to…

This paper is a letter of understanding between British Columbia Teachers' Federation (BCTF) and British Columbia Public School Employers' Association (BCPSEA) in response to Employment Equity for Aboriginal Teachers. The parties recognize that Aboriginal teachers are under-represented in the public education system. The parties are committed to…

This article presents the National Association of Early Childhood Teacher Educators' (NAECTE) position statement on early childhood certification for teachers of children 8 years old and younger in public school settings. The association requires public schools to employ and assign teachers with early childhood certification/endorsement to early…