Suchergebnisse

"By a brilliant young constitutional scholar at the University of Chicago--who clerked on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia for Judge Merrick B. Garland and on the Supreme Court of the United States for Justices Sandra Day O'Connor and Stephen Breyer, and who also happens to be an elegant stylist--a powerfully alarming book concerned to vindicate the constitutional rights of public school students, so often trampled upon by the Supreme Court in recent decades Supreme Court decisions involving the constitutional rights of students in the nation's public schools have consistently been most controversial. From racial segregation to unauthorized immigration, from economic inequality to public prayer and homeschooling: these are but a few of the many divisive issues that the Supreme Court has addressed vis-a-vis elementary and secondary education. The Schoolhouse Gate gives a fresh, lucid, and provocative account of the historic legal battles waged over education. It argues that since the 1970s, the Supreme Court through its decisions has transformed public schools into Constitution-free zones. Students deriving lessons about citizenship from the Court's decisions over the last four decades would conclude that the following actions taken by school officials pass constitutional muster: inflicting severe corporeal punishment on students without any procedural protections; searching students and their possessions, without probable cause, in bids to uncover violations of school rules; engaging in random drug testing of students who are not suspected of any wrongdoing; and suppressing student speech solely for the viewpoint that it espouses. Taking their cue from such decisions, lower courts have validated a wide array of constitutionally dubious actions, including: repressive student dress codes; misguided "zero tolerance" disciplinary policies; degrading student strip searches; and harsh restrictions on off-campus speech in the internet age. Justin Driver dramatically and keenly surveys this battlefield of constitutional meaning and warns that impoverished views of constitutional protections will only further rend our social fabric"--

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.