Despite low opinions of the nation's schools, Americans rate public school teachers more highly now than they have in the past, according to the 2011 Phi Delta Kappa International (PDK)/Gallup Poll of the Public's Attitudes Toward the Public Schools. More than 70% say they have trust and confidence in the men and women who teach in public schools.…

The purpose of this report is to describe what the authors learned from studying eight teacher career advancement initiatives implemented across a variety of contexts, including urban, suburban, and rural districts; high poverty and affluent districts; and in schools/districts both with and without strong union presence. They describe key…

Information technology has spawned new evidentiary sources, better retrieval systems for existing ones, and new tools for interpreting traditional source materials. These advances have contributed to a broadening of public participation in civil society (Blouin and Rosenberg 2006). In these culturally unsettled and economically fragile times…

This book examines a policy that is one of the most powerful levers to improve teaching quality and advance teaching as a profession. Jennifer Goldstein presents the story of Rosemont, an urban district in California that created "professional accountability" with peer assistance and review (PAR), an alternative approach to teacher…

In early 1909, just over a hundred years ago, the Spokane, Washington, branch of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) got a reputation as a "singing union." Later that year, the same Spokane branch of the IWW embarked on a massive free speech fight. IWW agitators would arrive on street corners, call on the crowds not to pay for…

In the United States, we tend to assume that young people should become educated and then go to work, as though the two were entirely separate stages of life. This dichotomy blinds us to the fact that work itself can be a powerful means of education-giving students opportunities to apply academic subject matter to real-world problems, and pushing…

For young people in the United States, whatever their backgrounds, one of the essential purposes of schooling should be to help them develop the knowledge, skills, and competence needed to search for and obtain work that they find at least reasonably satisfying. Our present educational system does precious little to introduce young people to the…

In the United States, we tend to assume that young people should become educated and then go to work, as though the two were entirely separate stages of life. This dichotomy blinds us to the fact that work itself can be a powerful means of education. Indeed, the workplace is where many young people become most engaged in learning high-level skills…

Although the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) never became a major player in American political life, it was a significant participant in mainstream politics and the trade union movement in the 1930s and 1940s. It has also been the focus of sustained attention by historians. An online bibliography of scholarly writing about domestic American communism…

Recent research (Strunk and Reardon forthcoming) applies Partial Independence Item Response (PIIR) models to teacher bargaining agreements in California to calculate the latent restrictiveness of these contracts. Further research (Strunk and Grissom 2010; Strunk forthcoming) tests the external validity of these estimates. Given that much research…

School districts have two general courses of action to maintain fiscal solvency and raise student achievement in the face of drastic funding cuts. They can reduce spending on teachers, a strategy opposed by many teachers' unions because it threatens teacher job security. They can also cut expenditures in other areas such as instructional…

Chicago teachers voted last week to suspend a 7-day-old strike, sending some 350,000 students back to the classroom and paving the way for the teaching force to vote on a tentative contract. But for many in the Windy City, the contract has raised another potentially tall hurdle: how the cash-strapped district will manage to pay for it. District…

Although education is not the highest priority in this year's presidential election, the fact that education is an issue at all highlights the role of politics in education. More than for most professions, from the district to the national level, elections and political agendas shape the policies that govern classrooms. Although the teacher unions…

Purpose: The aim of this paper is to analyze international and national research and development (R&D) programs and roadmaps for the manufacturing sector, presenting how agile and lean manufacturing models are addressed in these programs. Design/methodology/approach: In this review, several manufacturing research and development programs and…

Commonly referred to as the living room of campuses, student union facilities serve as an environment for the social, cognitive, cultural, and intellectual education of students that occurs outside the classroom. This study aims to provide an understanding and knowledge of the student union-activities profession, its dedicated professionals, and…