This report examines a decade's worth of research on school vouchers and concludes that vouchers have had no clear positive effect on student academic achievement, and mixed outcomes for students overall. Effects on graduation rates, parental satisfaction, public school achievement and cost to taxpayers are discussed. The report also notes that…

Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush and the Foundation for Excellence in Education have embarked on a well-funded campaign to spread selected Florida education reforms to other states. These reforms include assigning letter grades to schools, high-stakes testing, promotion and graduation requirements, bonus pay, a wide variety of alternative teacher…

Disproportionality, the over- or underrepresentation of a particular group compared to its presence in a population, in special education is a long-standing issue (Dunn, 1968; U.S. Department of Education, 2006; Waitoller, Artiles, & Cheney, 2010). Some scholars have proposed group or universal screening for emotional and behavioral risk in…

In 2002, New York became the fourth state to offer in-state tuition to certain undocumented immigrants enrolling in its public postsecondary education institutions. Although enacted several years ago, the implementation of this legislation has never been examined. This qualitative single case study with embedded units explored how New York's…

Following signals across Europe the European Students' Union (ESU) will focus its next working year on defending education as a public good, and a public responsibility. Since the very start of the new ESU team in July 2010 the ESU elected representatives have been working to develop a new political vision for the next ESU working year, that both…

Holding closed sessions in school board meetings to reach major policy decisions is generally discouraged; but, school boards occasionally use this tactic if conflict and tension arise. Therefore, the questions of "how often does a Board of Education encounter conflict and tension" and "how is the decision made to schedule a closed session to…

Standardized academic testing, under-performing schools, demands for high standards in America's schools and current levels of student dropouts have resulted in renewed calls for "getting tough on student retention." The push for student retention is demanded by school boards and others in spite of the overwhelming research evidence that…

Recent moves in Australia to institute a national curriculum emanated from federal governments of ostensibly different political persuasions in the period from 2003, building on developments that go back over 25 years. This article traces continuities and new developments, meditating on two questions: whether the current moves are politically…

Museums have the capacity to enhance social cohesion, which is the product of a trusting, connected community. History museums and historic sites, in particular, can serve communities by stimulating dialogue on difficult issues, accurately representing all the people of a nation, and creating forums for discussion among groups with disparate…

This article discusses how the Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) accountability mechanism of No Child Left Behind makes use of supposedly objective standardized test scores to describe schools in a certain way when the very same results could serve to draw very different conclusions. Examining the proficiency scores of students from a specific middle…

Discourses within the UK Labour government's welfare policy agenda have consistently featured a reformulation of programmatic governance away from both centralised hierarchies and neo-liberal markets to a social policy strategy that highlights a commitment to inclusive partnership working. Significantly, this process of meaningful social…

Aboriginal children learn a two-way pedagogy and most Aboriginal learners have to engage in bicultural and bilingual education to succeed in the dominant educational setting. Aboriginal Australians pride themselves on being Aboriginal, however Aboriginal epistemology and ontology are never considered as true methodologies within a dominant…

The previous issue of "Blueprint" reported significant variability among state standards for education. Such variability means that depending where a student attends school, he might not cover the same material in a course called Algebra I, or Algebra II, or Grade 4, or Grade 6. Many citizens and leaders understand that having a single set of…

This article is a revised and abbreviated version of a session that the authors presented at the 25th annual Lilly Conference on College Teaching, November 19, 2005, in Oxford, Ohio. It arose from their joint conviction that while teaching is the greatest job in the world, teachers do not need to stay in it until death do them part. Beidler and…

These short essays address the political nature of teaching dance in higher education from various perspectives. Issues of identity, authority, power, expectation, and assumption are addressed within the context of the teacher-student paradigm. From personal perspectives, each author examines the ways in which who they are affects what and how…