Compares the effectiveness of public and private schools by analyzing trends in enrollments, organization, and graduation and college entrance. Policymakers need to address the growing public willingness to consider private alternatives in education. (BJV)

Structural differentiation and the culture in which the schools exist must be considered when addressing the issue of class size. (BJV)

Examines the advantage to urban education of school-to-work transition programs. A vision is presented for a work-centered education that takes full advantage of the best characteristics of cities and clarifies how this approach addresses some of the serious problems facing urban schools. The author indicates how these programs can invigorate…

Juxtaposes the issue of professional development, specifically teachers'"opportunity to learn," with how the workplace context of teaching supports impedes curriculum integration between vocational and academic education. Portraits of three urban high schools reveal the problem of professional development as one of reinventing the high school…

Studies school-site administrators' understanding about ways of gaining/maintaining power, control, and predictability. Multisite study data concerning assistant principals identify rules of the game for four micropolitical (site-level assumptive world) domains. Assumptive worlds create avoidance of value conflicts and risky change, group-think…

Discusses the rationale behind the Cleveland Collaborative for Mathematics Education, which networks urban high school math teachers with college math professors and mathematicians in business. Describes a typical teaching day for one high school teacher and how environmental challenges such as family abuse, student absenteeism, and lack of…

Some school districts are experimenting with learning experiences outside the classroom that benefit the community and engage students in a more meaningful and multisensory learning experience. Students involved have a higher success rate in school and are encouraged to develop higher order thinking skills. (CJS)

Examines the approach of the College Board's Advanced Placement (AP) Program to curricular development and assessment using the framework of D. Massell for agenda setting for content standards. Opportunities and constraints applicable to the current national standards movement are discussed. The AP program clearly meets capacity building and…

Examines three case studies picked from a longitudinal study of the effects of Chicago school reform and investigates school improvement under site-based management. Two elementary schools represent descriptive accounts of school reform and improvements, and one high school illustrates constraints on reform. (GLR)

Presents narrative accounts of the meaning of work and love for two Latino community youth activists, exploring how Latino community development in the city has given meaning to the lives of these youths and their families, neighbors, and other young people. The educational implications of their stories are discussed. (SLD)

Examines the role and influence of one Los Angeles (California) school where the approach to education begins with the community. Efforts to embrace a nontraditional educational model in this urban school are described and analyzed. The 350 students at this high school participate in community service while receiving a full range of academic…

Explores the ideological commitments that are tacitly accepted and promoted by the norms, values, and dispositions of institutional expectations of the everyday routine experiences by pregnant and parenting students. A portrait of the curriculum they experience at present is followed by a discussion of changes that must be made to school programs…

Identifies how teacher discourses influenced the educational policy process by drawing from an ethnographic study of a school-supported integration initiative for pregnant and parenting teens in a high school in a small Canadian city. Conservative and liberal points of view about the program are explored. (SLD)

Explores the role of schools in providing pregnant and parenting adolescents with an array of support services that can mitigate some of the consequences of too early childbearing. Key research findings in the field of service delivery to pregnant and parenting adolescents are summarized to provide a knowledge base on which to build. (SLD)

Describes a component of one North Carolina school district's plan for improving the high school environment by integrating community-policing strategies and problem-solving techniques for reducing school crime, delinquency, and disorder. By using teacher/student working groups, the school reports declines in the incidence of school crime and…