The factors affecting funding levels of South Carolina's public elementary and secondary school districts must be reexamined. If state education monies for 1988-89 had been distributed to compensate fully for local tax variations, the state's wealthiest districts would have received a 31.8% funding decrease and the poorest districts would have…

Two activist teacher educators discuss the ravages of global capitalism, abandonment of American cities, breakdown of Keynesian economics, dismantling of the welfare state, and resulting dissolution of identities and entire lives. Schools must fight social injustice and racism. Teachers should pursue classroom-based research that investigates the…

Discusses media culture and the populist construction of nationalist identity, highlighting right-wing conservatives Pat Buchanan's and Rush Limbaugh's cultural conformist viewpoints. Leftist intellectual Richard Rorty's notion of national identity constricts the principles informing a multicultural and multiracial society. Educators need a…

Examines how the principal's (metaphorical) role has changed since the 1920s. If the pattern of previous decades holds, the metaphor for the 1990s will merge the principal as facilitator with the principal as instructional leader (the 1980s metaphor). The influence of total quality management applications, performance domains, and preparation…

Education, like other governmental activities, is characterized by a competition for scarce resources. Security, whether in the form of metal detectors or condom availability, is an additional fundamental value that has grabbed center stage in the struggle among competing fundamental values (efficiency, equity, liberty, and quality) in educational…

Sexual harassment is prevalent on both school and college campuses. Parents and educators can eliminate sexual harassment in schools by teaching students to be assertive and report offensive behavior to an adult, documenting children's encounters with sexual harassment, checking with other parents, and filing a formal complaint. Schools need…

School/university collaboratives place great demands on participating organizations and individuals. This article presents two scenes from a collaborative effort involving a college of education and its local public high school. These scenes illustrate the need for collaborators to identify and integrate their specific aims and demonstrate mutual…

Defines a basic framework for educational strategic planning that serves both learners and society. Discusses Mega Planning's critical success factors, common planning errors, and basic elements of scoping, planning, implementation, and continuous improvement/evaluation phases. Strategic objectives should drive curriculum objectives, and these in…

Describes a Mega Planning simulation using a complete strategic planning process aimed at reinventing U.S. public education systems. The process involved scoping (developing the ideal mission, assessing mega-needs, and deriving mission objectives); planning (deriving the mission profile, performing function analyses, and evaluating performance…

Discusses the nature of school restructuring in Australia and provides a justification for restructuring predicated on improving teaching and learning. Provides various restructuring frameworks, recognizes the need to clarify qualifying conditions, and addresses ways to overcome implementation problems. Ambiguity and ambivalence over…

Summarizes a study examining the impact of England's 1988 Education Reform Act on a group of 138 parents whose children (first-year students) would be most affected. The success of Britain's educational reform is debatable. Although parents are happy with their children's schools, they have reservations about governmentally imposed changes. (19…

School supervision, an important component of China's educational structural reform, arose from the need to implement government policies for modernization and political control and enhance scientific policy making in education. Although the new, decentralized system has helped implement government policies and increased administrative…

Summarizes a study that surveyed school board presidents and school superintendents about their perceptions of school reform. Reports their views on desirable restructuring outcomes, important restructuring ingredients, factors influencing restructuring, and the political emphases associated with restructuring. Although school officials generally…

Describes factors that constrain and facilitate participation, representation, and discourse in two urban site-based schools. Presents findings via basic themes, exemplifying scenarios reconstructed from field notes, discussion of observations, and a cross-school analysis. Site-based management could democratize schools if hierarchically based…

To prepare for the future, professors will have to develop community, collegiality, and diversity. At present, college faculty's priorities and perversities may keep them from facilitating this triadic set of values. A radical tolerance for disagreeable, distasteful, even dangerous differences must occur for faculty to communicate honestly and…