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Educational change often reflects shifts in social, political, and economic conditions. The launch of Sputnik in 1957 for example, has been cited as pivotal in amplifying the dialogue on educational reform in the United States (Ogawa, Crowson & Goldring, 1999; Young & Levin, 2002). Similarly, the release of A Nation at Risk in 1983 led to a proliferation of research on characteristics of effective schools (Owens, 2001). Waves of innovation have characterized North American schools since at least then, with Canadian schools echoing many of the American concerns and adopting their approaches (Young & Levin, 2002). Despite this and other developments in scholarship and practice, there is a growing recognition of the immutability of schools (Ogawa, Crowson & Goldring, 1999; Rowan, 2002; Thomas, 2002; Young & Levin, 2002).One particular area that has enjoyed increasing consideration within schools and among researchers is collaborative, or participative, decision making which aims to engage educational stakeholders including teachers, students, parents, and community members. School improvement literature emphasizes parent involvement as a key strategy to achieving school effectiveness and increasing student performance. This challenges schools to involve parents and others in their organizational structures and processes. The purpose of this paper is to investigate through the lens of institutional theory the organizational resistance to including parents and others in one Alberta jurisdiction involved in the Alberta Initiative for School Improvement (AISI) project.

In 1830, Boston's school committee reorganized its schools to match its spatial imagination: an idealized spatial model that reflected the lives and social experiences of its elite members. To unify individual schools and regulate student sexuality, the committee created single-sex schools with one male master. To unify the overall system, the committee redistributed students by sex and adopted a hierarchical teaching staff commanded by the committee. However, the committee's spatial imagination conflicted with physical buildings and geography, with the different spatial imagination of middle-class parents, and with the irreconcilability of individualized buildings and a unified system. The committee backtracked in 1832.

This podcast, Part 1 of 2, will delve into how to get a bill through Congress. The Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 is used as an example of the process of creating a bill and what happens once it leaves the hands of the creator and moves through committee, to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) where it is scored, to the Congressional Research Service for further research, and then to the committee chair where they can move it forward or "chair it" (AKA 86 it) the bill. ; https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/civil_discourse/1004/thumbnail.jpg

This podcast, part 2 of 2, picks up where we left off last time – at the point where the Senate majority leader has almost the unilateral discretion to decide when a bill is going to get a vote by the Senate body as a whole. The process then moves to the floor for unlimited debate, aka the filibuster, to not take a vote or make amendments to further negotiate the bill before, if approved, it goes to the house for approval (checks and balances). Believe it or not, there are still many steps before a bill becomes a law, and they are all covered in this podcast. ; https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/civil_discourse/1005/thumbnail.jpg

Introduction / Prentice Chandler and Nancy Patterson -- Academic freedom in the balance / Nancy Patterson and Prentice Chandler -- A more complicated story : student free expression rights in public education / Ryan Suskey -- Taking action and taking offense in "our little democracy" : high school students share their perceptions of First Amendment rights and responsibilities / Nancy Patterson, Diann Brown, and Jeanne Vidoni -- Practicing free expression in schools through student-led conferences : a review of literature / Cheryl Lambert -- Student and teacher perceptions of democratic classroom organization, management, and instruction / Jeffrey Nokes -- First Amendment rights and expression : news and views from students on information and social media in schools / Sarah J. Kaka -- "I walk for ..." : teacher activism in action / Kristy A. Brugar and Dalton C. Savage -- Defending academic freedom : advice for teachers / Michael Simpson -- They speak for themselves : students name the phenomenon of civic education and freedom of speech / Donna K. Philips -- Real choices to act : waking up to Charlottesville and testing the First Amendment / Clayton Kalaf-Hughes, Ellie Boyle, and Kerika Bucks.

What is the effect of state politics on the growth of a state's charter schools? The academic and policy debate on charter schools largely focuses on the effect of a state's charter school statutes, specifically the degree of statutory discretion for charter schools, on charter school growth and student achievement. However, we rarely consider the politics in the state capitals that account for the content of a state's charter school statutes in the first place. I argue that a state's legislative institutional capacity affects charter school growth by the degree of statutory and regulatory discretion that state lawmakers grant to local school boards of education. In order to verify this argument, I create new quantitative measures of statutory and regulatory discretion to compare the contents of charter school authorization, renewal, and revocation statutes and regulations within and across forty-one U.S. states with charter school laws from 1991 to 2013. The first chapter argues that legislative term limits has a negative effect on statutory discretion. The second chapter demonstrates the interaction of a state's teacher union strength and the legislative regulatory veto has a positive effect on regulatory discretion. The third chapter argues that statutory discretion has a negative effect on the percent of operating charter schools. Overall, this dissertation demonstrates the effect of legislative institutions on the percent of operating charter schools, the percent of public school students enrolled in charter schools, and the percent of black and Hispanic public school students enrolled in charter schools in a given state.

In the World War I era, U. S. public schools became a battleground
in the struggle over militarism in American society. Preparedness
advocates and many physical education teachers pressed for military
training in the public schools. Peace educators and teacher activists,
predominantly female organizers for the American School Peace League
(ASPL), strongly opposed it. This article highlights the centrality
of gender politics in the struggle and the role of local classroom
teachers. Teachers in the campaign against military training were
part of a new, more radical trend in the U. S. peace movement in the
1910s. They were often at odds with the ASPL's conservative national
leader, Fannie Fern Andrews. Teacher-activists developed a significant
critique of militarism and its impact on children, and built diverse and
effective community coalitions. They based their political authority not
on maternalism but on professional identity. This study suggests that a
full account of women's political culture in the early twentieth century
demands closer attention to the activities of female teachers.

AbstractElementary and secondary education policy making in the U.S. states is heavily influenced by the political bargaining of various actors, with teacher unions one of the most important actors. Yet previous studies that assess the impact of teacher unions on education reform use problematic measures of their direct political influence, instead opting for broader measures of membership or collective bargaining power. By contrast, the authors measure teacher union political activity by calculating the percentage of campaign contributions to candidates for state office that come from teacher unions. Using this measure, the authors find that increased teacher union political activity greatly reduces the chances that states enact reform-oriented education policies such as school choice and performance pay for teachers, while previous measures of teacher union strength bear little relationship to a state's adoption of these reform policies. These findings highlight the importance of paying careful attention to how political influence is operationalized in studies that assess the role organized interests play in shaping U.S. state policies.

"Im Zentrum der ideenpolitischen Bemühungen, die die japanischen Eliten der Meiji-Ära (1868-1912) unternahmen, um das Land in modernem Gewand, doch auf traditionellen Grundlagen zur Nation zu formen, standen der Tenno-Kult und die allgemeine staatliche Pflichtschule. Zwischen der Verabschiedung der Verfassung des Kaiserlichen Japan im Jahr 1889 und dem Erlass des Kaiserlichen Erziehungs-Edikts im Jahr 1890 bestand insofern ein enger politisch-ideeller Zusammenhang. Der Artikel verfolgt die konflikthaften Auseinandersetzungen, die im letzten Drittel des 19. Jahrhunderts zwischen den Verteidigern altjapanischer Bildungstradition und den Anhängern westlicher Aufklärung, zwischen konfuzianischen Intellektuellen und westlich orientierten Demokraten, ausgetragen wurden. Er entwickelt vor diesem Hintergrund die weder selbstverständliche noch einlinige Genese der normativen Grundlagen des modernen Japan. Die Autoren beschreiben die wechselnden Inszenierungen, die in diesem Zusammenhang dem Tenno zuteil wurden: von seiner anfänglichen Rolle als öffentlich sichtbarem Symbol der Einheit der Nation (auf landesweiten Rundreisen oder Militärparaden) über den völligen Rückzug hinter die Palastmauern (in Konsequenz seiner Sakralisierung durch den erstarkenden Staats-Shinto) hin zu seiner indirekten Rückkehr in den öffentlichen Raum (in Form eines hochstilisierten und kultisch verehrten Konterfeis). Und sie schildern - unter Einbezug auch autobiographischer Reminiszenzen - sowohl die aus buddhistischer Tradition übernommene sakrale Überhöhung der modernen Schule wie die zeremoniellen Präsentationsformen des kultisch verehrten Tenno-Bildes und die von ihm ausgehenden sozialintegrativen und loyalitätsstiftenden Wirkungen." (Autorenreferat)

Commercialism appears to be alive and well, in society at large and in schools. In 2007, we see a marketing environment that recognizes few boundaries. Advertisers ply their trade wherever they can and even engage consumers as collaborators in their marketing strategies. This "total environment" of marketing is enabled in part by new technologies that allow advertisements to appear in places they could not have been before, such as video games, social networking websites, and cell phones. It is also the result of greater cultural acceptance of marketing as an everyday fact of life, a friendly political environment, and a willingness on the part of marketers and advertisers to breach boundaries that previously limited their activities. Whereas, for example, there used to be a clear boundary between "editorial content" (e.g., television programming, magazine articles, or school curricula) and advertisements, we now see the judges on American Idol sipping from Coca-Cola cups, the debonair cavemen from Geico commercials starring in their own television program, and Disney Publishing providing comics to schools for a reading program.

Increasing social and political polarization in our society continues to exact a heavy toll marked by, among other social ills, a rise in uncivility, an increase in reported hate crimes, and a more pronounced overall climate of intolerance--for viewpoints, causes, and identities alike. Intolerance, either a cause or a consequence of our fraying networks of social engagement, is rampant, hindering our ability to live up to our de facto national motto, "E Pluribus Unum," or "Out of Many, One" and prompting calls for how best to build a cohesive civil society. Within the public school--an institution conceived primarily for the purpose of inculcating civic virtues thought necessary to foster solidarity in a pluralistic society--the intolerance has contributed to increased bias-based bullying, particularly toward transgender and gender diverse students. The devastating impacts of intolerance and exclusion on transgender and gender-diverse students include disproportionate rates of psychological distress, physical ailments, increased risk of homelessness, and other negative outcomes. As schools ponder how best to meet their needs and create safe and supportive learning environments, some parents have attempted to assert exclusive authority in this domain, challenging practices such as the adoption of gender-complex and LGBTQ-inclusive curricula as well as gender-affirming policies and practices. Parents allege that attempts by schools to accommodate transgender and gender diverse students infringe on their parental rights and the privacy rights of their cisgender children. While some schools have yielded to parental objections, others have resisted. This Article presents a compelling approach for schools both to address the challenges posed by objecting parents and to carry out their original mission of inculcating an appreciation for democratic norms--namely, civility, tolerance, and equality--through the adoption of gender complex and LGBTQ-inclusive curricula. Relying on both long-standing limitations on parents' ability to exercise curricular control and research on the benefits of inclusive and comprehensive curricula, this Article makes the case that the educational purposes served by gender complex and LGBTQ-inclusive curricula more than justify any alleged burden on parents' free exercise of religion as protected by the First Amendment or any alleged infringement upon parents' substantive due process rights as protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. It posits that although both parents and the state share responsibility for shaping our youngest citizens, parental interests should be subordinate to the interests of the state in promoting proteophilic competence--an appreciation for diversity--through public education. This critical educational mission holds the promise of reaching beyond the scope of gender to include the inculcation of civic virtues essential to the health of an increasingly demographically diverse nation: Respect for "other-ness" and the development of skills needed for effective democratic self-governance.