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An overview is presented on constructing a new educational system in New Zealand. Potential strategies include widening access to ensure open participation, broadening the use of educational technology, and fostering relationships between early childhood development and education with an integrated intellectual environment.

Some colleges and universities stand out in the popular imagination as hotbeds of political activism, while others do not. In this paper, I examine the factors that account for this variation in campus activism: why student activism occurred on some campuses during the 1960s and not others. With some notable exceptions (e.g., Soule 1997) theoretical developments and insights in the social movement literature have not been applied to student activism. In addition, most existing studies of student protest are ahistorical. They examine protest only within one time period, failing to recognize the influence of history and culture in fostering protest activity. I use social movement theory to explore the factors that influence the location of student protest, and develop the hypothesis that a history of activism is strongly associated with student protest. I also demonstrate that locations that have protest around one issue are likely to have protest around multiple issues. I suggest that this is due to the influence of activist subcultures, which underlie movement families within a protest cycle, influencing the ideology and tactics of activist organizations. A sample of 423 colleges forms the basis for these analyses, conducted using logistic and OLS regression models.

Scholars in many fields have long recognized the role that social and professional networks play in the diffusion of innovations. However, among political scientists, an awkward separation has emerged between scholars investigating policy diffusion processes and those investigating policy networks and, more generally, the role of ideas in politics. In this article, we present a theoretical argument for integrating insights from policy network studies into diffusion studies. Since they face clear incentives to tap the resources of policy networks, we give policy entrepreneurs a prominent place in this discussion. Using event history analysis models of the diffusion of school choice ideas across the United States, we test the empirical relevance of our discussion and find that greater involvement in policy networks significantly increases the likelihood of policy entrepreneurs achieving their legislative goals. based on our theoretical discussion and these empirical results, we suggest that political scientists investigating the diffusion of policy innovations should pay careful attention to the role that policy networks play in this process.

The concept of Chicago school reform focuses on ethnic politics within Chicago and how the battle over school system centralization and jobs emerged from larger ethnic and racial struggles. The power of ethnic groups to control jobs has long been the basic element of school politics in the city. The reform movement has further complicated the idea behind ethnic politics, giving more rooms for competition.

An analysis of Bill Readings' book 'The University in Ruins' delves on the political context of university education as viewed from the Marxian perspective and strategy for change. Although Readings' work in making a structural diagnosis of the nature and future of universities deserves recognition, there are some propositions on which he may have erred. One of these areas is his historical characterizations of reason, culture and excellence.

Martin Heidegger's rectorate (1933-1934) was characterized by an incontestable involvement with Nazism. However, neither the rectorate, nor Heidegger's ambitious project for the transformation of the university within which it was embedded, was reducible to Nazism. Indeed, Heidegger's project to transform the university dates from his earliest lecture courses at Freiburg University in 1919 and was a hallmark of his thinking long before the rise of Nazism. That project was itself linked to the long-standing dispute in German academia over the role of the university in the modern world, which involved such thinkers as Kant, Schelling, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche. Despite the entanglement with Nazism, which stamped his rectorate, Heidegger's thinking about the university as a site for the transformation of human existence is especially pertinent today., When Martin Heidegger assumed the post of rector of Freiburg University in April 1933, and joined the Nazi party, one of his first tasks was to implement the Gleichschaltung or [...]

The resistance to detracking is political in nature and is generated by the local elite as shown by research studies. The elite argue that detracking is tantamount to lowering academic standards. What is really at stake, however, is their sense of entitlement since they equate intelligence with class and prestige, culture and race. Strategies utilized by the elite to undermine detracking include threatening to withdraw their children from school, co-opting institutional elites, buying-in the middle class and even bribing schools with social or symbolic capital.

Those contending for the post of principal use politics to stifle the efforts of reformers to attain their goals, ignoring the administrators. Principalship battles exclude education completely and concentrate on retaining or gaining power to attain their selfish needs.

Institutions of higher education should ensure equity in recruitment and teaching by implementing multiculturalist policies. Politics in higher education prevent African Americans from acquiring the level of education necessary for their social emancipation. Institutions of higher education must help African Americans integrate with the majority community and encourage their equal participation in all college programs and activities.

Extraordinary policy-making may be triggered by critical elections and political crises, but it may also be related to major waves of collective action, especially when all three of these - as in France in 1968 - are present. But protest is seldom sufficient on its own to effectuate major reforms; as the case of the French Loi d'Orientation for higher education shows, it requires a reformist faction in the elite ready to take advantage of the political opportunities offered by protest. Even then, as the same case shows, the effects of protest are quickly dissipated and the season for protest-induced reformism is short. Protest cycles or other crises are best seen as necessary, but not sufficient conditions for extraordinary policy-making., The relationship between extraordinary policy-making and the 1968 social protest movement in France is presented. Results show that protest is insuffient to guarantee the translation of the educational reform agenda to concrete legislation and implementation. The elements of the structure of political opportunity which include electoral realignment, opening of institutional access, presence of influential allies, divisions within the political elite must support the protest movement to insure its success.

This article examines the issue of education during the 2002 mid-term election campaigns. The author argues that for the first time the Democrats have lost their edge on education, an issue that has been central to their party, and are running neck and neck with the Republican Party.

The author examines an amendment proposed by Sen Rick Santorum and attached to a bill overhauling federal education programs. The amendment singled out evolution as a controversial subject and would require teachers to acknowledge this controversy; scientists counter, however, that evolution is only controversial from a religious perspective.

Can photographers who are primarily interested in personal expressiveness also use photography to address the social and political issues of their time? Essentially this was the challenge put forth at [...]

Faculty members state they are being left out of the decision making process as college governing boards increasingly assert their authority in assessing the performance of college presidents. Trying to find the right level of faculty involvement in the evaluation process has led to greater divisiveness between academics and administration.

Conservative activist governing boards increasingly tie the hands of presidents at public universities, leading some to resign and making potential replacements more skeptical. The State University of New York and the University of California campuses at Berkeley and Los Angeles are all seeking chancellors in this climate, with a campus-restructuring scheme in New York and dismantlement of affirmative action in California imposed by the systems' boards. Reduced authority makes these positions less attractive, hence harder to fill with top talent.

The campaign contributions of proprietary schools to the US Congress members increased in Apr and Jun 1994, with the Congress debating to delay the implementation of 85/15 student-aid eligibility provision. The rule has been delayed following protests by the trade-school association. The legal counsel for the association has denied any relation between increased contribution and school aid measure. Democrats have received higher amounts of contributions from proprietary schools than Republicans. The House-Senate conference committee plans to write a single appropriations bill.