Policy "alternatives" begin as general ideas, and are inherently distinct from an innovation or reform that has been adopted by policy makers in a specific context in order to serve particular purposes. However, the interplay between the idea itself and that moment in time when it is adopted has often not been fully understood. In this article,…

Highlander Folk School is an adult education center located in eastern Tennessee that was formed in 1932 by Myles Horton and continues today. Myles Horton (1905-1990) hoped to create an independent adult learning center where people could come together and address their problems. He wanted to create a public space where people could learn from…

In this article, the authors use visual communications as a way to illuminate race relations and higher education from 1944 to 1960. They analyze photographs, and also draw on the history of graphic design to discuss the style of the publications in which they are placed. The pieces that they analyze are historical-drawn from the papers of the…

In this article, the authors explore a number of questions about the type and impact of service learning activities in the preparation programs for preservice teachers. They ask "what kinds of experiences are likely to benefit preservice teachers' understanding of collaborative partnerships?" and "what might they learn from preservice teachers'…

It is often noted that the vast majority of students in pre-service teacher preparation programs may be poorly equipped to teach in urban schools because, in great part, they are disproportionately White, female and middle-class (Darling-Hammond, 1997 and 2001; Delpit, 1995; Sleeter, 2001). Typically, these students arrive at the university with…

In this article, the author evaluates the policy choices sanctioned by state systems of performance-based accountability. She notes how first-generation models of educational accountability were mainly bureaucratic and regulatory in nature and how the accountability movement of the 1970s and 1980s evidenced a shift from an emphasis on rules to a…

In this article, the author offers an analysis of key problems with the latest Federal school reform initiative. He critiques the No Child Left Behind Act's (NCLB) Title One as it relates to standardized testing and accountability. In addition, he provides a short history of the Act, connecting it to President Lyndon Johnson's historic Elementary…

In this article, the author argues that women reformers are an under-researched influence on the school curriculum of this time period, their efforts having been eclipsed by myriad historical studies of the male professional leader. She presents an insightful analysis that interrogates the work of the woman's movement and asks how women sought to…

In this article, the author revisits the changing fortunes of Native Americans with respect to their experiences in the three types of government sponsored schools: industrial vocational boarding schools located outside the reservations, vocational boarding schools located on the reservations, and day schools on the reservations that stressed…

In "A New Wave of Evidence: The Impact of School, Family, and Community Connections on Student Achievement," published in 2002 by the Southwest Educational Development Laboratory, Anne T. Henderson and Karen Mapp reviewed years of research on parent involvement, and their conclusions are unequivocal. When parents are involved in school, students…

Bilingual education has been an extremely controversial and contentious topic in recent years among both educators and the general public in the United States. Long a bastion of what some writers have called "ideological monolingualism," the United States has not demonstrated either great sensitivity to or tolerance of linguistic diversity…

This article presents an excerpt of a declaration from the United States Department of Education's "Strategic Plan: 2002-2007." The declaration signifies in no uncertain terms that the battle waged by critics of alternative research methods continues, and is likely to intensify. The denigration of research methods which decline to adhere to the…

This study investigated obstacles to teaching civic education in the United States, a country whose government was established on democratic principles over 250 years ago, and Hungary, a European country presently making the transition to a government based on democratic principles. The purpose is to compare the obstacles within these two…

The United States faces an economic-influenced educational crisis. According to the U.S. Department of Commence, Census Bureau data (2002) the difference in household earnings between the upper and lower quintiles has worsened over the last forty years. Future generations possess suspect knowledge to properly manage this income, as youth possess…

In a 1974 essay entitled "Cloud of Smoke, Pillar of Fire," Rabbi Irving Greenberg offered the "working principle"--no statement, theological or otherwise, should be made that would not be credible in the presence of burning children--in response to Christian silence during the Holocaust and as a kind of moral plumb line by which post-Shoah…