Discusses five assumptions regarding accountability and public schools: reporting to parents in the community, assessment techniques, school complexity, teaching and learning processes, and improving schools. Draws on accountability legislation and best practices in many states to offer viable possibilities to regaining public trust in education…

Explores various impediments facing the academic labor movement, especially the resistance of tenured radicals, focusing on the experiences at Yale University. Discusses how graduate student organizing can jeopardize student-faculty relationships, affect chances for academic jobs, and create personal and professional tensions in many…

Defines how political balances and changes in Turkey effect creation-evolution relation. Describes the influences of Bilim Arastirma Vakfi (BAV) on these changes, which are directly targeted to public education, and discusses the content of creationism. Questions why Islamic creationism is a copy of that of the Institute for Creation Research…

Presents a case study for use in business communication classes to help students understand and learn both the context and the strategies for communication with business and management. Discusses a successful entertainment amphitheater's problems with noise complaints, a city council's reluctance to spend money for an acoustical study, and the…

Examines some of the directions that modernization of teacher unionism has taken in the 1990s, explaining that the 1990s has been the decade of the Australian Education Union (AEU). The paper describes the AEU and looks at organizational changes within the AEU, industrial roles, and political roles that affect today's teacher unions in Australia.…

Examines the politics of representation among teachers at a racially mixed high school undertaking detracking. Interviews with 45 of the 81 teachers, several administrators and counselors, 15 students, and seven parents show how the reform effort, led by female teachers, was derailed as male teachers used a gender discourse to support the status…

Presents brief guidelines for developing writing assignments based on the author's description (a politicized representation) of postmodern cultural studies. Discusses a composition assignment in which students critique the formal and the hidden curriculum of a class they have taken in the recent past, and in which they also become writing members…

Describes developments in the state of South Carolina regarding school assessment and accountability. Outlines the mandates of South Carolina's Accountability Act of 1998 which focuses directly on "school accountability." (SR)

Observes aspects of Australian public policy discussions of gender equity that are concerned with boys. Focuses on (1) the ways indicators are used in public policy constructions of gender inequality, (2) what types of reforms constitute gender equity as a project, and (3) research agendas and the entry of masculinity into gender research. (DSK)

Offers five suggestions which may be helpful to educators in responding proactively to criticisms of literacy-learning practices, as they work cooperatively with parents, Boards of Education, tutors, and other key players in reinforcing the perspective that literacy learning is genuinely valued and is connected to meaningful contexts during daily…

Enters a discussion about the appropriate role of researchers from a dominant group in conducting research about a subordinated group. Relates one scholar's experiences as a man researching in the area of feminism. Argues that these researchers can work with integrity but that it takes self-reflection and commitment to accountability. (DSK)

Passage of Proposition 227 (ending bilingual education in California public schools) in June 1998 holds many lessons, including the need to address criticisms early. In electoral battles, administrators should lead with parents, not educators, academics, or advocates. Proposition 227's fate was sealed a year earlier, when bilingual advocates…

Reviews "Presence of Mind: Education and the Politics of Deception," (Pepi Leistyna, 1999) which discusses the American politics of identity and difference, analyzing how deceptive political ideologies operate through educational policy, schooling, and popular culture to reproduce the current racialized social order. The book offers…

Discusses Great Britain's funding of higher education institutions, which is linked to funding student support, identifying factors underpinning the Secretary of State for Education and Employment's establishment of a National Committee of Inquiry; exploring contextual dimensions of those working to influence policy; considering educational…

Offers four short articles describing the authors' experiences teaching a 10-day summer program on fact-based journalism in Eastern Europe for teachers and students from 14 countries. Outlines the experience itself, and discusses language barriers, photojournalistic insights, and reaching beyond prejudice toward understanding. (SR)