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Imagine you live in a city with a set of open-enrollment public schools, serving predominantly low-income children of color, where students learn at twice the rate of their peers in [...]

A biography is presented on Hazel Pete, a Native American from Washington state, along with her contributions toward improving education for Indian peoples in the US. The article chronicles her difficulties in being accepted upon her return to the reservation after receiving a public education, and her work in overcoming the distrust Native Americans had of the federal school system.

Research into the effect of legislative reform on the viability of small primary schools reveals that the centralization of educational control has a negative effect on the educational and economic environment for small schools. Results are based on a 1993 study of small schools in England and Wales; topics include government policy, local management of schools, financial restrictions on local authorities, and ways that local action can support small schools, such as clustering and volunteer support.

Interviews with individuals who were affected by the reorganization of Australian states' schools reveal that the philosophy of restructuring was not constant throughout. The reevaluation of the purpose for reorganizing the school systems is resulting in a reexamination of the significance of centralized authority and recognition of the need for a common set of values. The heads of the systems initiated restructuring for ideological reasons. Themes of continuity versus discontinuity and fragmentation versus integration are discussed. The issue of who benefits from structural reform is also explored.

Italian and US school systems have evolved along contrasting lines of thought regarding local and central funding and control. The American experiment, based on local financing and autonomy, has contributed to educational disparity among the rich and poor districts. State funding and controls are now being instituted as correctional measures. Italian education is a national responsibility controlled and funded by the state that guarantees equality in education. The system now allows some local autonomy in an effort to modernize. Both systems seem to be converging towards similar structural patterns.

This article examines the effect of external political pressure on the distribution of influence in school districts. It is specifically concerned with the influence exercised by school-level administrators and teachers on school-level policy. School districts are viewed as institutional organizations. However, differences across school districts in influence patterns cannot be easily explained with standard institutional theories that stress common patterns of structure across organizations. A theory of local variation across institutional organizations, relating external political pressure and centralization, is developed and assessed empirically using data from High School and Beyond.

The article chronicles the efforts of Clarina Howard Nichols, a political reformer, journalist and editor, to obtain school administration election voting rights for women teachers. Nichols had hoped school suffrage would bring about equality for women, but contemporary conceptions of motherhood complicated the issue.

Quick: Who are the arch enemies of effective U.S. school reform? Try, sadly enough, the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the two national teachers' [...]

The marketing and procurement practices Todd Oppenheimer describes ('Selling Software,' features, Spring 2007) were in place decades before NCLB. Even 10 years ago, the largest school contracts were with multinational [...]

The methods of selecting school boards are being questioned. Governors typically make appointments to postsecondary boards, and the criterion is often a political one. Reform movements in Kentucky and other areas of the country are discussed.