Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
- Keyword
-
- Education reform (4)
- Boston public schools (2)
- Education (2)
- Higher education (2)
- Massachusetts (2)
-
- United States (2)
- 1980s (1)
- 1992 Mathematics NAEP Assessment (1)
- Affirmative actions in schools (1)
- African-American students (1)
- American education (1)
- American schools (1)
- American universities (1)
- Art education (1)
- Art educators (1)
- Babson College (1)
- Better high schools (1)
- Black students (1)
- Boston School Committee (1)
- Boston University (1)
- Budget (1)
- Chelsea citizenry (1)
- Chelsea public schools (1)
- Children of color (1)
- College student voluntarism (1)
- Community service (1)
- Conservative educational reform movement (1)
- Correctional education programs (1)
- Decline in wages (1)
- Early prevention of violence (1)
Articles 1 - 25 of 25
Full-Text Articles in Education
Implementing Retrenchment Strategies: A Comparison Of State Governments And Public Higher Education, Marvin Druker, Betty Robinson
Implementing Retrenchment Strategies: A Comparison Of State Governments And Public Higher Education, Marvin Druker, Betty Robinson
New England Journal of Public Policy
The authors present a comparative analysis of the processes and strategies by which public organizations implement retrenchment in the face of continued budget shortfalls. The focus is on the governments of the fifty United States and public institutions of higher education in the nine states of the Northeast. Special consideration is given to the programs that have been tried, sources of ideas for the strategies adopted, and constraints that institutions face when dealing with financial crises. While similarities were found for state governments and colleges and universities in use of past strategies and short-term fixes, differences were found in the …
Better High Schools: What Would Create Them?, Theodore R. Sizer
Better High Schools: What Would Create Them?, Theodore R. Sizer
New England Journal of Public Policy
The American desire to improve education has set off a flurry of activity to reform schools. In such a climate of restructuring, Sizer explores what better secondary schools might "look like" if indeed they existed. His consideration of the improved high school is based on five particular conditions — all of which support teachers and students in their engagement with the serious stuff of learning and all of which must exist in one form or another for schools to be effective. The conditions are cast as questions. Sizer locates the responsibility for school reform broadly, from the heart of a …
Parent Involvement In Urban Schools: The View From The Front Of The Classroom, Frances Gamer, Kathleen Mccarthy Mastaby
Parent Involvement In Urban Schools: The View From The Front Of The Classroom, Frances Gamer, Kathleen Mccarthy Mastaby
New England Journal of Public Policy
American educational reform movements focus on efforts to restructure our schools to include all interested parties, especially parents, in the decision-making process. Nowhere is involvement more crucial than in America's inner-city urban neighborhoods. As parents are given a greater voice in their child's school, educators must join them as collaborators. This article identifies elements that impeded parental involvement and recognizes positive and encouraging techniques leading toward successful family-school-community partnerships. An alliance between groups too long seen as opponents rather than proponents must be established.
The School Improvement Industry: A Case Study Of Framingham, Abigail Jurist Levy
The School Improvement Industry: A Case Study Of Framingham, Abigail Jurist Levy
New England Journal of Public Policy
This study looked at school improvement in the Framingham public schools from three perspectives. We were interested in finding out if the administration and school committee, local businesses with an interest in education, and agencies that provide training and technical assistance to schools have similar ideas regarding how the Framingham schools should improve. We conducted interviews with administrators and members of the school committee, local businesses and businesses involved in school/business partnerships, and six agencies that provide training and technical support to schools in the Greater Boston area. We found that although all groups shared many interests, the businesses and …
The Impact Of School Spending On Student Achievement: Results Of Meap Statewide Tests, Robert D. Gaudet
The Impact Of School Spending On Student Achievement: Results Of Meap Statewide Tests, Robert D. Gaudet
New England Journal of Public Policy
Examining school spending and student achievement as measured by the Massachusetts Educational Assessment Program tests on a community-by-community basis indicates that high spending in and of itself does not ensure achievement. While every community must have adequate funding to deliver an acceptable level of education services, there is a wide variation in achievement in similar communities with similar spending. The data suggest that other factors influence outcomes at least as much as spending.
Violence Prevention In The Schools, Deborah B. Prothrow-Stith
Violence Prevention In The Schools, Deborah B. Prothrow-Stith
New England Journal of Public Policy
Violence and its consequent injury and death represent a major health problem in this country. The United States has one of the highest homicide rates in the industrialized world: ten times higher than that of England and twenty times higher than that of Spain. Fatalities from violence represent only the tip of the iceberg: nonfatal intentional injuries occur as many as one hundred times more frequently: assault and intentional injuries identified in medical studies can be four times those reported to the police, suggesting that medical institutions are a primary site for identification of individuals with violence-related problems. Violence and …
Education And Falling Wages, Lester C. Thurow
Education And Falling Wages, Lester C. Thurow
New England Journal of Public Policy
Start with a statistic that should be burned into the brain of every American. If one looks at young males eighteen to twenty-five years of age who work full-time for a full year — eight hours a day, five days a week, fifty-two weeks a year — 18 percent of them could not earn a poverty-line income ($12,183 in 1990 dollars) in 1980. Ten years later, in 1990, that number had risen to 40 percent. Among young female workers eighteen to twenty-four years of age, the percentage unable to earn a poverty-line income despite full-time, full-year work rises from 29 …
Affirmative Action Strategies In Elementary And Secondary Schools, Abigail Therstrom
Affirmative Action Strategies In Elementary And Secondary Schools, Abigail Therstrom
New England Journal of Public Policy
Disproportionate numbers of black students do poorly on standardized tests; strategies to improve American education thus frequently target inner-city schools. These strategies often have an unrecognized affirmative action component. A search for more minority students or teachers is clearly an affirmative action effort. But the elimination of all tracking or competency grouping is another matter. Normally viewed as nothing more than a pedagogical strategy, it, like other affirmative action efforts, amounts to a conscious effort to alter the low-track status of minority pupils. Similarly, the demand for curricular reforms, racial sensitivity training, and more culturally "appropriate" tests, while not obviously …
What's Wrong With Reform?, James H. Case
What's Wrong With Reform?, James H. Case
New England Journal of Public Policy
The conservative educational reform movement, which still, after more than a decade, is the dominant force in school reform, has had little success in improving schools because it is based on invalid and self-defeating theoretical assumptions. Taken together, these assumptions have the effect of substituting nostalgia — a longing for the schools the reformers themselves attended —for policy and for increasing standardization at the expense of individual growth and development. The reformers (Bloom, Hirsch, Ravitch, Finn, Bennett, et al.) have particular difficulty, given their assumptions, in dealing both with individual differences among students and with ethnic and racial differences among …
Inclusion: Educating Students With And Without Disabilities, Bill Henderson
Inclusion: Educating Students With And Without Disabilities, Bill Henderson
New England Journal of Public Policy
This article presents an overview of inclusion, a practice that is being utilized increasingly in schools across the country. In inclusive schools, students who have disabilities learn together with their nondisabled peers. Teachers and support staff collaborate to serve all students in integrated classes. After reviewing the social and legal background of inclusion, Henderson describes specific strategies for designing and implementing successful programs. He outlines organizational change, curriculum and instruction modification, and school culture transformation.
New Directions In Juvenile Justice: School-Based Crime Prevention, Paul F. Walsh Jr.
New Directions In Juvenile Justice: School-Based Crime Prevention, Paul F. Walsh Jr.
New England Journal of Public Policy
This article considers the role of the district attorney as a catalyst for aggressive school-based educational programs to help young people avoid trouble with the legal system. Walsh argues that while it may be unfair to burden classroom teachers with additional responsibilities concerning drug and alcohol issues, school is the logical site at which to provide these services and that a district attorney is well suited to act as a catalyst and resource for providing these additional services.
Notes On Higher Education In The 1990s, Zelda F. Gamson
Notes On Higher Education In The 1990s, Zelda F. Gamson
New England Journal of Public Policy
This article consists of a series of essays written for The Academic Workplace, the newsletter of the New England Resource Center for Higher Education, since 1990. The backdrop for the essays is the increasing inequality in higher education caused by changes in the political economy of higher education, especially in New England. The first essay analyzes the roots of contemporary faculty dissatisfaction with their work lives by tracing the impacts of the expansion of higher education, changes in the student body, and greater government involvement in higher education. Subsequent essays discuss multicultural education, faculty shortages, political correctness, responses to …
The Changing Nature Of Universities, Ernest A. Lynton
The Changing Nature Of Universities, Ernest A. Lynton
New England Journal of Public Policy
Excessive emphasis on research as the dominant measure of institutional as well as individual prestige and values has created a critical mismatch between the activities of American universities and societal expectations. This article traces the origins of the resulting crisis of purpose to the post-World War II surge in federal research support and articulates the urgent need for basic changes in university priorities at a time teaching and professional services have acquired both new importance and new complexity. It further describes current efforts toward a more balanced view of the components of university missions and a resulting shift in faculty …
Service Learning: The Promise And The Risk, Alice L. Halsted, Joan C. Schine
Service Learning: The Promise And The Risk, Alice L. Halsted, Joan C. Schine
New England Journal of Public Policy
Service learning, the pairing of meaningful work in the community and structured reflection, has the potential to transform schools. It provides opportunities for young people to test new roles, develop skills, apply academic learning in a "real world" setting, and move toward responsible citizenship. Service learning can reinvigorate traditional classrooms and turn passive students into dynamic and engaged learners. However, unless it is implemented with care, with a solid rationale and clearly articulated learning and service goals, service learning will fail to realize this potential. The power and the promise of service learning are too great to allow this imaginative …
Why Is Boston University Still In Chelsea?, Glenn Jacobs
Why Is Boston University Still In Chelsea?, Glenn Jacobs
New England Journal of Public Policy
In the face of obdurate social, educational, and political failures, problems, and obstacles, Boston University persists in its management of the Chelsea public schools. It also persists in its refusal to share power with such Chelsea citizenry as the resistant Latinos whose leadership the university seeks to discredit. Jacobs examines the historical background of the city and its schools to decipher Chelsea's economic dependency and repeated fall into receivership and privatization.
Naep State Reports In Mathematics: Valuable Information For Monitoring Education Reform, Ronald K. Hambleton, Sharon F. Cadman
Naep State Reports In Mathematics: Valuable Information For Monitoring Education Reform, Ronald K. Hambleton, Sharon F. Cadman
New England Journal of Public Policy
The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), a congressionally mandated program, can provide valuable data to educational policymakers in Massachusetts and other New England states about the status of their educational reform initiatives and their performance standards. The three purposes of this article are to describe NAEP and its goals and structure, to present some of the results of the 1992 Mathematics NAEP Assessment as an example of the utility of this national assessment program, and to highlight ways in which background data collected by NAEP can be helpful in interpreting assessment results and monitoring educational reform. The six New …
Lessons In The Common Good: Voluntarism On College Campuses, Jodi Raybuck
Lessons In The Common Good: Voluntarism On College Campuses, Jodi Raybuck
New England Journal of Public Policy
This article describes the current interest and activity in community service and the undergraduate educational experience. Many examples of campus-based voluntarism with a social reform twist set the stage for passage of the National and Community Trust Act of 1993. What is still necessary, however, is recognition by faculty, administrators, and agency officials that the community service experience must be structured properly, so that both service and learning take place. Drawing on the efforts at Babson College and direct involvement with the national scene, this analysis offers recommendations for implementing a program that helps to cultivate good citizenship and values.
A Thoughtful Approach To Public Education Reform, John C. Rennie
A Thoughtful Approach To Public Education Reform, John C. Rennie
New England Journal of Public Policy
This article restates the underlying rationale for the importance of high-quality K-12 public education. The author describes some of the difficulties reformers encounter in engendering support for and determining the most cogent elements of reform. The differences between the aims and capabilities of school-business partnerships, which essentially assist the current system, and systemic reform, which aims to change the system, led to the formation of the Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education. Rennie summarizes the process followed by MBAE in developing a framework for reform and meeting its objectives.
Teaching African-American Children: The Legacy Of Slavery, Harold Horton
Teaching African-American Children: The Legacy Of Slavery, Harold Horton
New England Journal of Public Policy
The pathetic state of urban public school education offered to African-American children stems from slavery, when it was against the law to educate slaves, who were regarded as chattel. This article traces the history of the blighting of their minds by stripping those slaves of their African culture, and its effect on African-American children, as well as other children of color, today. Horton offers suggestions for coping with the problems of modern schools as related to respecting and teaching these children, pointing out that the system is the problem, not the children.
Key Issues Facing The Boston Public Schools, Robert A. Dentler
Key Issues Facing The Boston Public Schools, Robert A. Dentler
New England Journal of Public Policy
This article is the third examination of the six issues the author identified in "Some Key Issues Facing Boston's Public Schools in 1984," following the November 1983 election of the first thirteen-member Boston School Committee. He revisited these issues in a 1988 report and now assesses how the policy leadership of the system fared in dealing with these challenges during the past decade. He discusses other issues at the close of this article. Writing from a sociological point of view, Dentler is primarily concerned with the question of how well the public school districts and their school staff are able …
Connecting Productive Schools And Workplaces For A Knowledge Society, Byrd L. Jones, Robert W. Maloy
Connecting Productive Schools And Workplaces For A Knowledge Society, Byrd L. Jones, Robert W. Maloy
New England Journal of Public Policy
As American education struggles to achieve new competencies for an emerging information age, popular reforms remain locked in industrial-era metaphors. Testing for basic skills, teacher professionalism, and school-business collaboration assumes that schooling prepares workers with skills for predictable roles. Meanwhile, computers and related technologies make possible low-cost information that is transforming learning and jobs. Hierarchical organizational structures that subordinated most employees have given way to flatter, flexible teams. Quasi-autonomous decision making by knowledgeable professionals extends to more and more workers. When businesses simply offer schools a few extra resources, they stunt interactive partnerships that enable youth and business cultures to …
Follies: Education Reform And The Promise Of Technology, Nicholas Paleologos
Follies: Education Reform And The Promise Of Technology, Nicholas Paleologos
New England Journal of Public Policy
This article offers an overview of forty years of American education and suggests why technology may save us from ourselves.
Local Autonomy, Educational Equity, And School Choice: Constitutional Criticism Of School Reform, James J. Hilton
Local Autonomy, Educational Equity, And School Choice: Constitutional Criticism Of School Reform, James J. Hilton
New England Journal of Public Policy
Many critics of America's public education system hail parental or school choice, a program that allows public school systems to compete against one another and, under some proposals, against private educational institutions, for students and educational funding, as the answer to Americas educational crisis. Proponents argue that competition will force public schools to offer students a quality education or close. This article does not evaluate the claims of the parental-choice proposals; rather, it examines the difficulties inherent in funding such a system through traditional school finance mechanisms.
The Misplaced Burden: Art Education As Social Healer, Carol Cruickshanks
The Misplaced Burden: Art Education As Social Healer, Carol Cruickshanks
New England Journal of Public Policy
Social transformation is one of the potential benefits of art education, but not its sole responsibility. Why, then, in an effort to ensure adequate funding, are many art educators forced to emphasize this aspect of art education above its intrinsic power to help shape individuals? An art educator examines the historical roots of the imbalance between current educational policy and the practice of public art education.
The Suffolk County Sheriff's Department: Correctional Education Program, Robert C. Rufo, Stefan F. Lobuglio
The Suffolk County Sheriff's Department: Correctional Education Program, Robert C. Rufo, Stefan F. Lobuglio
New England Journal of Public Policy
This article describes the Sheriff's Department correctional education programs at the Suffolk County House of Correction and Jail. It points out the tremendous need for educational services given that more than 60 percent of those incarcerated in these institutions are high school drop-outs, and a much higher percentage are functionally illiterate. Because 95 percent of those incarcerated at this facility will return to their communities within three years, educating prisoners serves as a constructive and cost-effective means of preventing recidivism and an effective investment in public safety. The authors also discusses the new Mandatory Literacy Law, which essentially links literacy …