To restructure teaching by changing teacher roles, five working condition must be enhanced, including support for teaching, collegiality, influence, recognition and advancement, and time. Three policies claiming to facilitate these conditions (differentiated staff, site-based management, and schools with learning communities) are true…

Whereas democracy institutionalizes distrust, professionalism relies on trust. Responding to Berbules and Densmore, this article identifies strong normative reasons, grounded in the interests of children, for promoting teacher professionalism. Exorcising the evils of classic professionalism will eliminate neither equity nor quality problems.…

How professionalism functions as an ideology was a central theme of the authors' original essay. Because of hegemonic associations surrounding professionalism in this society, teacher professionalism would have consequences undermining the ends of democracy, equity, and cultural diversity that Gary Sykes proposes. Also, most current teachers would…

The Cleveland (Ohio) Collaborative for Mathematics Education has rejuvenated the teachers, who have benefited from increased participation in decision making and productive forms of collegiality. Despite these gains, math curriculum and instruction remains heavily influenced by systematic programing, traditional teaching and learning conceptions,…

Examines teacher education reform in Israel, focusing on educational reform documents analyzed by applying methods from poetics and intellectual history. The analysis shows how global reform rhetoric has been used to negotiate a new construct somewhere between the "ideal model" of teacher professionalism imported from pace-setting countries and…

Whereas private institutions are chiefly accountable to the narrow, limited constituencies supporting them, public institutions are typically accountable to more general constituencies that are diverse, broad, and conflicted. This essay reviews two recent books by British authors that discuss the two "ideal" accountability models and places both…

Praises Harold Silver's book "Education, Change, and the Policy Process" for its complex, thoughtful essays justifying the use of history to make informed educational policy. Questions Silver's strong focus on top policymakers and his failure to acknowledge policymakers' usual reliance on intuition and ordinary knowledge, not scholarly studies.…

Reports on a study assessing the progress of the Boston Compact initiatives in 7 of Boston's 22 middle schools. Launched as a premier high school-business partnership in the early 1980s, the Compact was expanded to include middle schools in 1987. As of 1988, the seven schools studied have demonstrated the positive influence of even fledgling…

Educational opportunity and civil rights are the bedrock of America's best and worst attempts to achieve pluralism. The civil rights movement shook the nation's moral fiber, weakening only after reaching the highest governing bodies. Educational reform efforts could learn much from this lesson in successful social transformation. Educational…

Although improving teachers' salaries, status, and work conditions is essential, the traditional professional model is an ineffective, inappropriate basis for accomplishing these goals. Rather than relying on an undemocratic concept connoting privilege, special status, and the superiority of mental labor, teachers should seek less elitist bases of…

Examines competency testing reforms in a state education agency and a local school district. Addresses linkages among reform impetus, implementation, and consequences in both sites. Identifies general issues in high stakes testing reform and highlights evaluation's role in mediating complex political, technical, and social issues. Includes 13…

Uses classroom observations and interviews to examine three kindergarten teachers' perceptions, focusing on gender-related differences in the balance between home and work and the development of internalized commitment. Suggests ways to make teaching a more aesthetic experience for family caregivers. Includes 19 references. (MLH)

Recent incorporation of a performance assessment in Arizona's test mandate provides an opportunity to examine the assumptions and beliefs underlying measurement-driven reform. Efforts to meld cognitive-constructivist beliefs about pupil learning and assessment contradict behaviorist beliefs about changing teachers and reforming schools. Mandates…

Summarizes a study surveying 153 K-8 teachers to determine their attitudes about standardized achievement tests, tests' usefulness, perceptions of how others view them, and perceptions of how best to prepare students for them. Results indicate that teachers felt negatively about the tests, and many engaged in practices that threatened the tests'…

Argues that test security in student testing is an immoral, inefficient practice rooted in medieval views of the teacher-student relationship. Secrecy practices involving testing should be scrutinized carefully and minimized through the use of explicit principles--an Assessment Bill of Rights--that put students' rights on par with the testmaker's…