Educational administrators have been aware of the effects of politics on the effective operation of schools since the political reform movement in the late 1800s and early 1900s. During this time of increased change and the demand for accountability, the ability to explain or anticipate political conflict in the community would be welcome by many…

This paper focuses on the role of the World Bank and its subsidiaries in promoting the neoliberal educational reforms of privatization and decentralization globally and in El Salvador. Neoliberalism is first defined as a sociopolitical philosophy that supports concepts such as the free market, market-driven education, and the use of a voucher…

This book is a collection of essays in which the author counters high-stakes testing, the pathologizing of children, and the unrelenting critique of public schools with a persuasive account of how children actively make sense of the world and their experience through the making of works, such as drawings, constructions, and writings. The book is…

The history of language in South Africa is characterized by linguistic inequality, European domination and imperialist ideology, suppression and denigration of indigenous languages through non-recognition, and entangled interrelationships among education, race, language, and identity. Official policy enforced mono- or bilingualism through the use…

The election of Ronald Reagan to President in 1980 marked the political zenith of modern American conservative ideology in the 20th century. This book presents a historical analysis of conservative ideology and its influence on federal school policies during Reagan's first administration, 1981-1984. It examines various conservative social agendas…

This book offers 21 papers in three parts. After (1) "Introduction" (Jacques Maurais and Michael A. Morris), Part 1, "Global Communication Challenges," includes (2) "Towards a New Global Linguistic Order?" (Jacques Maurais); (3) "The Geostrategies of Interlingualism" (Mark Fettes); (4) "Language Policy…

This book is a collection of conference proceedings, papers, comments, and other documents that was compiled as a response to the national controversy that erupted in the aftermath of the resolution on Ebonics by the Oakland Unified School District in late 1996. That resolution affirmed the need to incorporate an explicit focus on Ebonics in…

This paper describes higher education reform in post-Soviet Russia. Basic educational reform began in 1987 towards the end of the Soviet period, moving through two earlier stages, and is now in the third stage. The first stage was an ideological shift in the vision of education as a social institution and a profound change in the philosophy,…

This paper explores assumptions about children's political thinking as reflected in African American children's literature, with particular attention to picture books and illustrated magazine stories. Framed in terms of the "art or propaganda" distinction that the Harlem Renaissance philosopher Alain Locke used to clarify the role of art…

In February 2001 the Center for Civic Education conducted the first survey of alumni from the "We the People... The Citizen and the Constitution" program. Three Hundred forty-one alumni, who were eligible to vote in November 2000, participated. Voting and other forms of political engagement formed the core of the study. Since respondents…

This report describes the implementation of School-Based Decision-Making (SBDM) Councils. The research drew on a stratified random sample of high schools, middle and junior high schools, and elementary schools geographically distributed throughout the eight service regions of Kentucky. The paper also details the types of decisions being made by…

Helping professionals need to be more informed and more active advocates for proactive counseling strategies with Native American Indian and Alaska Native peoples. The paper discusses the major advocacy needs of these populations. The negative impact of historical and contemporary discriminatory policies and practices on Native peoples has…

This publication contains journal essays and book chapters (from publications of the National Council of Teachers of English) which address trends and issues in elementary language arts education. The following articles appear in the publication's first section, "Writing and a Move to New Literacies": (1) "Sacred Cows: Questioning…

The legal definition of Florida's public education system includes its local public schools, charter schools, voucher schools, and schools contracted to provide special education services. The constitutional mandate for a "uniform, efficient, safe, secure, and high-quality system of free public schools" suggests that the expectations of a high…

Because of the individual authority of each State for its own educational program, practices and policies differ widely among them in many respects. Yet in the midst of differences there are also common elements of development. The U. S. Office of Education, in presenting this series of monographs, has attempted to point out those common elements,…