Undocumented students' access to higher education has been an understudied topic, not due to lack of interest but because of difficulties in obtaining institutional approval for research and institutional concerns about student disclosure. While the exact number of undocumented persons in the United States is not known, it is estimated at 11.6…

The relationship between the state and higher education institutions has always been a complex one. The "state" itself in this context is a heterogeneous mix of elite people--bureaucrats, politicians, committees of co-opted academics and business leader--and it increasingly faces pressures from diverse stakeholders, including students…

Over the past ten years the PISA assessment has risen to strategic prominence in the international education policy discourse. Sponsored, organized and administered by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), PISA seems well on its way to being institutionalized as the main engine in the global accountability regime. The…

This case involves a struggle for control among differently situated leaders--district- and building-level administrators, teachers, parents and community members, and university partners--seeking to influence the reform agenda of a high-poverty urban elementary school serving Latina/Latino students. The various stakeholders encounter a variety of…

Using logistic regression, this study sought to understand the relationship between district characteristics, district finances, levy characteristics, and campaign expenditures with new operating levy outcomes. We found that employee benefits as a percentage of the district's budget were negatively associated with levy outcomes, while salaries…

Currently there are multiple teacher education reform policies being proposed, piloted, and debated at a variety of levels and by various interest groups, stakeholders, and policy-makers. Along with an unprecedented sense of urgency about these important goals, what most U.S. reforms have in common is increased accountability. Using a discourse…

While we hold that cultural colonization in English teaching in the cross-cultural context is a legitimate concern, we argue that when overstretched it tends to ignore the complex power relations within a culture by imposing homogeneity on it. It may also fossilize the role a foreign language can play in a multilingual context, which, we believe,…

This paper describes a three-year curriculum innovation project on teaching about climate change. The innovation for this study focused on a socio-critical approach towards teaching climate change in four different teaching domains (biology, chemistry, physics and politics). The teaching itself explicitly aimed at general educational objectives,…

This article employs Social Representations Theory as a theoretical instrument to analyse the right of children to an equitable education. It analyses how social representations of students and students' performances can be used by political actors as an interpretation system to manage contradictions in the equity education policies implemented in…

"Ghosts of No Child Left Behind" politically situates curriculum within a historically and critically informed context, to understand the structural forces that have contributed to the creation of a population of adolescents who read below a third grade level. The book then proposes a reconceptualization of literacy curriculum within a…

For nearly a decade, states have had flexibility in collecting and reporting graduation rate data for state and federal accountability purposes. But in 2008, the U.S. Department of Education issued new guidelines that require all states to report a new rate--the four-year adjusted cohort graduation rate--beginning in the 2011-2012 school year.…

Two persistent dilemmas haunt school reform: curriculum politics and classroom constancy. Both undermined the 1960s' new social studies, a dynamic reform movement centered on inquiry, issues, and social activism. Dramatic academic freedom controversies ended reform and led to a conservative restoration. On one side were teachers and curriculum…

Steve Kolowich's article, "No Laughing Matter" (2010), highlights the disconnect between information found on university and college websites and information relevant to students. Using a carton by Randall Munroe, Kolowich points out that website designers and college marketing officials really do not understand what is important to prospective…

This is the 11th paper in AGB's series summarizing federal and state public policy issues affecting higher education. We hope that governing boards, institutional and university-system leaders, and senior staffs will find it useful for board discussions and retreats and in formulating institutional responses to these issues. For the next two…

Getting an appointment with Secretary of Education Arne Duncan is challenging, and it's also a challenge to put Duncan in an ideological box. Though he champions education reforms favored by Republicans such as charter schools and teacher merit pay, his opposition to school vouchers and his solid working relationship with teachers unions keep him…