Summarizes school reform efforts in several urban districts, focusing on professional unionism and its superiority to traditional industrial unionism. These districts exemplify the art of school leadership, as administrators work through challenges to administrative authority, feelings of being excluded, and overloaded agendas. Teaming,…

Describes the development of INFOhio, a state-wide effort that is tying together Ohio's public and private school libraries in an online network. Highlights include electronic resources; training for librarians and teachers; a union catalog; choice of vendors; and the need for further funding. (LRW)

Traces business education's involvement in workers' education from the mid-1800s to the present. Much adult education is clearly employment oriented. A factory model prevails in most of America's schools. After years of treating human capital as expendable, companies are realizing that employees can offer value-added, competitive edges. Adult and…

School and union officials in California's Lompoc Unified School District turned what was an adversarial and distrustful process into highly collaborative one. The Lompoc experience suggests certain elements are crucial in transforming labor relations: (1) critical number of visionary key players; (2) sense of trust throughout the organization;…

Includes reactions to "The Learning Age" from the following: A.G. Watts, Richard Taylor, Richard Ely, Carole Stott, Donald Rae, John Lawton, Philippa Langton, Mary Lord, and Sarah Perman. Emphasizes the need for practitioner input from their varied experiences and for knowledge of client groups into the continuing development of the…

Describes efforts of the San Diego-Imperial Counties Central Labor Council (California) to develop programs in cooperation with local academics, including a successful law student internship program and some academic work with local unions. Constituency interests and needs, procedures, and general values involved in such cooperative programs are…

The Middle School Initiative, an ambitious plan to convert all New York City junior high schools to middle schools, faced numerous obstacles: loss of leadership support, teacher cynicism and resistance, blindness to difficulties, union regulations, pressures for quick results, administrator retirement incentives, and collaboration problems. (MLH)

Leading-edge states, districts, and unions are beginning to implement knowledge- and skills-based pay systems for teachers. PRAXIS and other performance assessment tools are described, along with sample assessment and salary schedule combinations. Effective principal leadership and yearly bonuses between $1,500 and $3,000 ensure sufficient…

In the US fewer than 3 million students attend classes, while 90 million need basic education and English programmes. Adult education teachers and administrators are often inexperienced in community organising and leadership development. They are often even untrained in adult education. The field is regarded so poorly by government and the public,…

In recent years, schools have been increasingly involved in youth's health-related behavior, particularly risky health behaviors (e.g., HIV/AIDS and pregnancy prevention programs). This study examined how acculturation processes among adolescent girls who are recent immigrants from the former Soviet Union (FSU) affect their practices of risky…

As networked learning becomes familiar at all levels and in all sectors of education, cross-fertilisation of innovative methods can usefully inform the lifelong learning agenda. Development of the pedagogical architectures and social processes, which afford learning, is a major challenge for educators as they strive to address the varied needs of…

The paper explores processes of social movement learning within SINTRAEMCALI, a public service trade union in the South West of Colombia, which has successfully prevented a series of attempts by the national government to privatise public utilities. The paper develops the concept of "strategic learning" and applies it to an exploration…

This article begins by recalling a recent court case about bullying in a school playground and about how the case was trivialised in certain sections of the media, with much discourse of "political correctness gone mad", and so forth, and of the need for good old-fashioned "common sense". Leaders of teachers' unions took a different view, rightly,…

As the pressure grows for students to learn and know more, so grows the demand on schools to raise achievement. It is a huge challenge for the country---and for the schools in which teachers work. The public appetite for dramatic solutions is substantial. That appetite is being fed by a stream of unproven reform proposals that will do tremendous…

This publication is a transcript of Superintendent Angus McBeath's presentation to legislators and media at an Issues and Ideas Forum hosted by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy in Lansing, Michigan. McBeath discusses education reform in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, including: (1) Basic Elements of Reform; (2) School Employee Union Involvement;…