The culture of fear in sanction-oriented schools hinders collaboration across differences in race, color, and culture. Strategies for encouraging active parent involvement include listening, supporting teacher leadership, inviting parents to help teachers develop coherent education goals, focusing on curriculum and instruction, and acknowledging…

A former elementary principal (and teacher) describes challenging, insightful experiences gained while substituting for teachers for a half-day. This practice, combined with scheduling "sacred" classroom visiting times while advancing toward the superintendency, kept him in touch with teacher concerns and classroom realities. (MLH)

Schools attempting to transform themselves by adopting desirable characteristics generally fail because they have skipped a long, difficult self-discovery process involved in becoming effective schools. Leadership may be as simple as knowing oneself, envisioning alternative realities, being persistent, and building everyday relationships. (MLH)

Americans' commitment to local control, expanded educational opportunities, and form over substance have made standards a hard sell. Education is becoming a private good to serve consumers' individual interests, not a public good serving broader public interests. A consumerist approach to standards stresses schools' sorting function. (MLH)

An evaluation of the Massachusetts Educator Certification Test has revealed unforeseen, counterproductive consequences. Teacher preparation colleges are adjusting curricular emphases to teach to a test of dubious validity and are inadvertently excluding substantial portions of enrollees to boost test scores. Minorities are failing at higher rates.…

Success for All, evaluated highly in several cities, has received unfair criticism. Opposing the process for developing, evaluating, and disseminating effective programs to high-poverty schools (particularly highlighting flaws in a tiny subset of studies) merely sows doubt and misinformation about a most promising reform development. (Contains 44…

The 2000 poll shows substantial public satisfaction with public schools; willingness to improve the existing system; eroding support for high-stakes testing and for private- and religious-school choice; insufficient financial support as schools' biggest problem; and parents as having greater influence than teachers over student performance. (MLH)

Despite Slavin and Madden's mountains of data, questions about Success for All results remain unanswered. Belief in SFA's unique success has caused Congress to reshape Title I policy in favor of comprehensive schoolwide reform models, influenced state and court program mandates, and restricted teachers' choices in serving disadvantaged students.…

Goodlad believes that schools and leadership training should stress renewal, not reform. The workplace cannot survive unless people are educated for democracy and its responsibilities. Vouchers should supplement a child's education, not subsidize private schools. Improving family resources is the best way to address poverty and raise achievement.…

The Agenda for Education in a Democracy has focused on the simultaneous renewal of schooling and teacher education for children's well-being. Well-educated individuals easily acquire specific workplace skills when necessary. Educating for the future means educating broadly and deeply and valuing childhood for its own sake. (MLH)

In pondering the reasons for declining standardized test scores at higher grade levels, a California high-school teacher realized that instruction may not be keeping pace with tests. A study of Chicago Public Schools found that repeated or low-level instruction in math and language arts classes was commonplace. (MLH)

Describes United States literacy characteristics, based on April 2000 reports from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development and the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Educational Research and Improvement. Discusses Angoff methods for evaluating validity of high-stakes testing programs in Massachusetts and Virginia. (MLH)

Discusses a 2000 federal trial court decision upholding a Kentucky district's termination of a tenured teacher who presented a curricular segment on industrial hemp as part of a "save-the-trees" unit. The decision underscores teachers' severely limited constitutional rights in the curricular context. (MLH)

Contrary to critics' claims, the United States could not boast the world's finest higher-education system while maintaining a deficient public-school system. Unregulated, profit-oriented market models are inappropriate for public schools responsible for serving the social good. Privatization and techno-efficiency pressures are equally…

Many urban schools should be called cafeterias, recreation centers, or community centers, because more time is spent eating, playing, and socializing than on teaching and learning. "Schools" are day camps with compliant attendees or custodial centers with involuntarily managed inmates. Teacher effectiveness turns solely on classroom-management…