The fight over school funding in most states involves a long battle in the courts that may span several years and never have a definitive endpoint because resistance to adequate funding of public schools appears to be endemic to government processes. The "DeRolph" case, first filed by the plaintiffs in December 1991, is one such legal…

In recent decades, educational and curricular reforms worldwide have been designed with the goal of preparing citizens for the challenges of globalization. Globalization has been thought to require the broadening of children's occupational perspectives beyond conventional geopolitical borders and cultures. And this requirement has led to doubts…

Conservative critiques of higher education rely on liberal doses of cash. Behind the conservative critique of U.S. higher education is a fervent commitment to ideals, to be sure--but there's also a sizable amount of conservative cash. The Bradley, Earhart, Castle Rock, and John M. Olin foundations have contributed lavishly to guidebooks aimed at…

This article examines the educational discourse in the part of the Sudan administered by the Government of the Sudan. It first analyses the value system upon which the Sudanese education is based by focusing on the nature of Islamism. Such a discussion is necessary because the dominant discourse is a discourse where power and Islamic theocracy…

Throughout the 1990s, the New Zealand education system was transformed by neo-liberal policies that promoted marketisation, school self-management, local governance and strong centralised forms of control and accountability. The election of a Labour-led "third way" government in 1999 has not only witnessed a continuation of the central…

This is a summary of a paper prepared for a conference on the White Paper of 2003, sponsored by The Center for Studies in Higher Education, UC Berkeley, and OxCHEPS, New College, Oxford, in Oxford, 28-30 September 2004. It offers reflection on the history of the relationship between British higher education and various British governments since…

In this personal narrative, the author describes "READ 180," a framework designed to teach struggling readers. The READ 180 program is premised on surface-level skills. Students answer comprehension questions and spell words with a keyboard and a computer screen rather than a booklet, pencil, and paper. Describing her experience with one…

The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act, the 2001 reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, has become a symbol of all things good and bad in education. While the basic concepts of the legislation--accountability for results, research-based education programs, increased parental options, and expanded local control and…

In this paper, I address the role of educational service provision as a mode of post-colonial assimilation and encapsulation in Native Alaska (USA). I argue that these services have historically served State interests above local interests, implemented with little regard for indigenous values or priorities. The role of education provision in one…

This paper analyses the process of secondary school admission in the District of Thanet in the contexts of consumerism and the functioning of the educational marketplace. It examines tensions between consumers and producers, and juxtaposes educational need with individual gain, arguing that the Local Education Authority's policies, the plethora of…

The U.S. Department of Education's first-ever evaluation of how states are meeting requirements for English-language learners under the federal No Child Left Behind Act can be looked at two ways. One view of the report, which was released to Congress on March 15, 2005, is that states have made great strides in laying the groundwork for schools to…

In her most noteworthy policy speech since taking office in January, U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings outlined how she would give states new flexibility to implement the 3-year-old law. The Department of Education will entertain proposals from states to waive rules under the federal No Child Left Behind Act. The department also will…

In this article, the author discusses his experiences tutoring high school students in math, and the discoveries he made about current mathematics education when he attempted to find the source of their problems. When confronted with a geometry student who did not know how to do proofs, the author began to investigate math textbooks, and found…

School boards, who have been regarded as the keystone that links public education to ordinary citizens, are normally elected. However, these elections are usually low-turnout, low-interest affairs in which the vast majority of ordinary citizens play no role at all. In school board elections, the incentives of the teacher unions are strong and…

Politicians, less interested in purity than in popularity, are generally wary of national standards. Yet a standards-based accountability system is the core component of NCLB, and in some ways it has made standards advocates victims of their own success. Now, many activists are agitating to cut back the role of Washington in education, and a…