In this article, Jeff Bale reviews empirical research, policy analysis, and other forms of scholarly commentary on the long-standing rationale of framing language education in service of U.S. geopolitical and economic security. This synthesis directly calls into question the commonsense view that national security and economic competitiveness are…

The author of this chapter argues that the failure of Spanish language education policies in the United States to educate both Latinos and non-Latinos has to do with the clash between three positions--(a) the English language, characterized by U.S. educational authorities as the unique and powerful lingua franca; (b) the Spanish language, as…

In this chapter, the author reviews the legal trajectory of language rights in public schooling in the United States and how language has been intertwined with other policy issues in court cases aimed at expanding access and equity for minority students: desegregation and school finance. Most of these cases originated in the Southwestern United…

Language and cultural preservation efforts among different communities of language speakers in the United States have received increasing attention as interest in linguistic rights and globalization continues to deepen. In addition to mounting evidence of the cognitive, psychological, and academic benefits of heritage language/community language…

In the past 150 years, educational systems have expanded and become integrally linked with economic, political, and social status in modern nation-states. As the stakes for education have risen, so has the call for more and improved use of scientific evidence as a basis for educational policymaking. Evidence from averaged scores on international…

Writing on contemporary culture and social life, sociologists and cultural theorists have been describing new or changing forms of movement, variously described as cultural "flows," "liquid life," or a "networked society." The change in such movements or mobilities of people, media, material goods, and other social phenomena, including the reach…

This chapter attempts to survey contemporary debates and research on outcomes of schooling that have been grouped together under the convenient label "nonacademic". This is not an affirmative labeling. As the nomenclature indicates, it is not a label that groups together things that share like properties. Rather, this is a label of distinction, a…

Defining equity within the context of a diverse, multiracial, multiethnic, multilingual, and multicultural society, and one where social class strongly influences one's life chances is problematic. This chapter reexamines equity in an attempt to advance the discourse beyond the debate about strategies to close the achievement gap between White…

This chapter is organized as follows. The first section examines the evolving state and federal role in education and the implications of an expanded federal role on the structure of the educational system. It pays particular attention to how the debate on the causes and solutions to school reform has shifted and the impact this has had on school…

In this chapter, the authors examine developments in the teacher workforce and in the occupation of teaching across recent generations. They take their point of departure from the perspective of prevailing policy discourse on enduring problems of educational equity, asking not only how teaching has evolved in recent decades but more specifically…

In this chapter, the author offers a historical overview of constructions of risk in the context of schooling for nondominant groups and how communities have organized schooling in ways that support resiliency in the face of these risks. She discusses an expansive orientation to understanding how people learn to respond to risks that is rooted in…

This article reviews the evolution of education policies in the East African region in a historical context. The focus is on the formulation of policies for access to primary and secondary education in Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania since their independence in the 1960s. The three countries have common characteristics and historical backgrounds. For…

This article focuses on the basic idea that having equality and justice for all in schooling cannot be achieved in the current climate where students are viewed solely as individuals. In fact, given the educational debt and achievement gaps, the ideas of equality and justice are necessarily contradictory. Achieving justice, in light of the…

A history of social justice in education is useful for at least two reasons. First, competing notions of social justice in education are not new. Tension between a belief in assimilation and the ability of individuals to climb the meritocratic ladder and the belief in a respect for cultural and linguistic differences and a flattening of the…

Inclusive education is a highly visible yet contentious notion in contemporary education reform because of conceptual, historical and pragmatic reasons. The purpose of this chapter is to examine and expand the evidence on inclusive education, with particular attention to the views of learning that inform this work. The first challenge was to work…