The "missionary ideology" underlying much of the service- learning movement results from decisions to "do good things" for others. However, this movement sometimes ignores recipients' voices and what they, particularly communities of color, might have to offer. Reciprocal learning and working with others are essential. (MLH)

Service learning holds tremendous potential for expanding and enriching children's education. However, community polarization can result when such programs are implemented in schools that are not freely chosen by families of children attending them. Parents must be allowed to choose schools reflecting their priorities and beliefs. (MLH)

Although Generations X and Y do not promote specific social-change goals, today's young people share a concern for building, maintaining, and serving community. Simply assigning students tasks in teacher-designed service-learning projects denies them opportunities for decision making, action planning, and leadership development. (MLH)

The compelling ideas underlying the standards movement are being distorted by poor implementation and political opportunism. Higher standards will probably not affect the nation's already booming economy or close the white/minority achievement gap. An emerging rebellion, driven by negative testing consequences, is eroding political support.…

Although postsecondary participation has soared during the past quarter century, the proportion of college students completing degrees has remained flat. White and higher-income kids graduate at much higher rates than their less advantaged classmates. Public policy's challenge is expanding successful intervention programs to a vastly larger scale.…

Durham (North Carolina) School of the Arts' transformation in 5 years from a run-down, segregated facility to a highly desirable magnet school is proof that a school accessible to the whole community can succeed. Students are chosen by lottery and are showing appreciable academic growth on state tests. (MLH)

Although most sixties-style, free-form high schools have faded or been eclipsed by "back to basics," alternative schools like H-B Woodlawn, in Arlington, Virginia, continue to flourish inside education's mainstream. The school thrives on informality, a lottery selection system, democratic governance, and high test scores. (MLH)

Gilligan's work at Harvard University has centered about the study of female thinking and moral decision making. She and her colleagues tried to repair the omission of girls' voices from the psychological literature. She is currently studying boys' narrowed self-expression and wants schools to amplify children's voices. (MLH)

Western educators are forgetting the need to impart knowledge about modern warfare's consequences. Science texts contain little about radiation damage. The nuclear bomb's destructiveness to humans and the biosphere should be a teacher responsibility in several curriculum areas. "War is hell" should be educators' main message. (Contains 11…

"America's Kindergartners," a National Center for Education Statistics report, suggests that kindergarten is becoming increasingly academic. Children's scores on the 1998-99 Early Childhood Study-Kindergarten reflected their mothers' educational and racial/ethnic backgrounds. Two-thirds of black and Hispanic kids fall into the lowest…

In a protracted case involving a varsity basketball coach's refusal to select a problem parent's son, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals decided the suit was frivolous and ordered the parent to pay $2,500 in court fees. This case illustrates the intersection of three American excesses--litigiousness, athletics, and divorce. (MLH)

While studying 16 middle schools engaged in "Turning Points" reforms, authors confronted a contradictory American culture that embraces democratic ends for schools, but resists democratic means to achieve them. Three demographically different schools struggled and compromised to incorporate civic virtue, thematic learning, social justice, caring,…

Since teachers have the most direct, sustained contact with students and considerable control over the teaching/learning climate, improving teachers' knowledge, skills, and dispositions is critical to enhancing student achievement. Professional development must also address schoolwide professional community and school program coherence. Two…

Applies a inside/outside reciprocity metaphor to the top-down/bottom-up combinations required for school reform. Sustained change requires internal change, active connection to the outside community, and a challenging, but nurturing external infrastructure. There is also a fusion of the spiritual, the political, and the intellectual. (Contains 13…

An effective systemwide teacher supervision and evaluation program can be developed only if district leaders (representing the school committee, administration, and teacher association) carefully attend to the ELPS (the educational, legal, public-relations, and social/emotional components of the process). A Massachusetts district's experience is…