In this article, I portray the status of visual art education in United States public elementary schools between 1997 and 2004. I report on trends in state policies and interpret data from a national survey of elementary principals, visual art specialists, and classroom teachers. I also provide information on public opinion about arts education,…

This chapter traces the legal, legislative, and political history of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). Focusing attention on the various related educational reform movements, it discusses the federal role in education policy in the context of its influence on ESEA and the legislation's related amendments. Also, the authors examine…

Promoting student access to the general education curriculum remains a focus of the 2004 reauthorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. This article examines educational practices that promote such access for students with mild mental retardation, overviews issues pertaining to the implementation of supplementary aids and…

Recent reform initiatives, especially the No Child Left Behind Act, tend to rely on a variety of highly debatable assumptions that fail to reflect the diversity of today's classrooms and also place pressure on educators in a manner we characterize as accountability by assumption. Such reform initiatives have become so political, complex, and…

A major provision of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Education Act of 2001 is the guarantee that all students in America's schools will be taught by teachers who are "highly qualified." At the same time, a large percentage of teachers of students with emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD) are not fully licensed teachers, and this has…

Critics of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) suggest that the effects of state-mandated testing are primarily negative, causing teachers to narrow the curriculum and drill students on tested material. However, the implementation of assessment programs that provide rapid diagnostic information about student progress may allow teachers to prepare…

Using the story of death row inmate Charles Singleton, who developed paranoid schizophrenia while in prison awaiting execution, this case study explores the relationship between a society's concept of mental illness and its treatment of people who are mentally ill. Students are asked to identify the model of mental illness assumed by each of the…

In Australia, anti-discrimination legislation and government policies have been introduced which aim to facilitate the inclusion of people with disabilities in employment and education. However in the area of nursing, attitudinal barriers persist that effectively hinder the full participation of people with disabilities in nurse education…

Public Law 107-110, the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, represents the most sweeping reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act since it was enacted in 1965. The goal of the No Child Left Behind Act is to improve the academic achievement of "all" American students so that they "all" meet their own state's…

The current educational arrangements of advanced liberal democracies continue to isolate various ethnic and racial groups. Disadvantaged minority students attend inferior schools. The overreliance on the curriculum as a design for teaching and learning renders school learning less relevant for "knowledge work" jobs in network societies.…

This article examines the legal instruments and educational politics affecting deaf persons' educational rights in Spain. We present a historical view of deaf education in Spain before and after the Congress of Milan (1880) and then introduce educational legislation and practices in recent decades. At present, Spanish legislation is moving toward…

This past fall, as part of a major higher education reform initiative, Colorado became the first state to implement a voucher system for funding higher education. The vouchers are the culmination of a reform effort initiated in the summer of 2001, when Governor Bill Owens created a blue ribbon panel to examine several issues, among them…

Legislative language, mandated by the newly reauthorized Individuals With Disabilities Education Improvement Act (IDEIA) of 2004 and the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) of 2001, underscores a number of issues relevant to students from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds displaying reading-achievement difficulties. In this article,…

The No Child Left Behind Act requires school districts to communicate with parents in an "understandable and uniform format ... in a language that parents can understand." But with a student population representing 131 countries and speaking 81 major languages, the Cobb County, Ga., Public School District was finding it difficult to meet…

This ethnographic study documents how accountability measures skewed the implementation of gender equity reform at one California public middle school serving low-income students of color. In creating single-sex classes throughout the school, the Single Sex Academy (SSA) became the largest public experiment with single-sex schooling in the…