This article reports on a program of research that examined the background, planning, implementation, and evaluation of an after-school preventive intervention program within an ongoing urban alternative education program targeting African American students referred to the school because of their problematic behavior in regular schools. The…

Similar to Dickens's "Tale of Two Cities", this research study is about a tale of two schools. The first type of school is a dysfunctional school. Dysfunctional schools are schools in a state of chaos (Shipengrower & Conway, 1998). The second school is that of order. The researchers refer to this school as a functional school.…

In recent years, policy makers, researchers, and educators have focused on the preparation of individuals in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) fields. One popular policy lever is STEM-focused high schools. The purpose of this study is to identify which student populations have access to STEM secondary schools. By comparing…

Historically, strong teacher unions have been successful at gaining benefits and security for their members, but they have been put on the defensive by recent proposals for education reform. Charter schools are one such reform that could threaten unions, but there is wide variety in the content of state charter school laws. Using state-level data…

In this article, I serve as a secretary for the critical policy analysis presented by hundreds of teachers, parents, students, and community members during 19 public hearings on school closures in New York City. In testimony at hearings, community members rejected the narrow, statistical approach they felt the Department of Education was using to…

Is the U.S. Supreme Court inviting litigants to take aim at unraveling injunctions in institutional reform litigation--especially consent decrees in the schools? In "Horne v. Flores" (2009), the court remanded a 17-year-old school reform case to a federal judge with orders to look beyond consent decrees on financing, reducing class…

This study investigates the legal literacy of urban public school administrators in Malaysia. Data were collected from 109 school administrators. The instrument that was administered to the respondents comprised two parts: Part 1, the background information of the respondents; and Part 2, items on the law related to schools, such as teachers'…

For-profit educational management organizations (EMOs) are a growing phenomenon in public education, and they are an integral part of charter school reform in many states. Research suggests that charter schools operated by for-profit entities may take a more entrepreneurial approach when expanding their operations and thus may be more inclined to…

This article looks at the issue of gifted and talented education from the perspective of public policy. It asserts that the underachievement of gifted children is a national concern, as these children may someday benefit society in ways that are disproportionate to their share of the population. Perhaps more importantly, it concludes that gifted…

The purpose of this article is to examine the proliferation of alternative certification pathways through an analysis of the role and history of teacher certification and supply followed by a synthesis of national, regional, and state research studies on alternative routes to certification programs and a review of studies conducted on well-known…

This qualitative study explored Teach for America (TFA) alumni teachers' discourse on Arizona language policy, conducted with eight teachers in the Phoenix metropolitan area who received their professional teacher preparation from TFA, a national organization that uses alternative paths to certification to place teachers in low-income schools.…

The purpose of this study is to inform public policies aimed at improving parental school-choice processes. The study estimates both the utility obtained by parents from different school attributes and the effective utility obtained with the actual school choice made by parents. The difference between both types of utilities provides a panorama on…

The continued presence of educational management organizations (EMO) is explained as an inevitable and continued component of the public school landscape. This article discusses both why EMOs are here to stay and the benefits of EMOs in public education. Statistics are shared showing a 420% increase in the number of EMOs over the past 11 years as…

The state of North Carolina is one of few states in the South in which two large districts committed to desegregating schools in the early 1970s. However, the state's two largest districts, Charlotte-Mecklenberg Schools (CMS) and Wake County Public School System (WCPSS) have experienced ups and downs in their policy commitment to desegregated…

Students are more racially segregated in schools today than they were in the late 1960s and prior to the enforcement of court-ordered desegregation in school districts across the country. This special issue addresses the overarching theme of policies, practices, or roles and responsibilities of various stakeholders that may directly or indirectly…