Editor's Introduction

In 1993, the Campaign for Fiscal Equity (CFE) challenged New York State's school financing system on the grounds that it failed to provide students sufficient opportunity for a sound basic education in New York City. CFE prevailed in 2003, after the case went before the New York Court of Appeals, and the state's funding system was determined to be unconstitutional and ordered to be altered to ensure "adequate" funding. The final decision decreed that before any remediation take place, an objective study be conducted to determine how much it would cost to provide an "adequate" education for all public school students in the state, on which this article is based. Although a professional judgment approach forms the centerpiece of the work, components of the analysis draw on other methodological tools (i.e., public engagement, expert panels, and successful schools) to further support the results. We find that for a majority of districts significantly higher levels of spending are required if the state wishes to provide a sound basic education to all public school students. Furthermore, the results show a clear negative relationship between the district-level shortfall in spending and educational outcomes across virtually all student subpopulations.     

Editor's Introduction

Significant changes are under way in West European schools. Advanced technology, the modern economy, and widespread aspirations for "middle-class" amenities of living have called for an updating of the structure and functions of the traditional educational systems. After slow beginnings, the reforms have gained momentum in the 1960s, and are now being spurred by the unrest of youth.     

Editor's Introduction

Contemplating the multiple sources of tension building within their academic communities in 1988, Chinese university educators identified among other things the growing gap between student aspirations and existing employment opportunities. The problem was not lack of jobs or too many college graduates. Rather, there was only an insufficient supply of the openings graduates had come to expect as big city employers replenished their stock of tertiary-trained expertise after the Cultural Revolution. By 1988, however, most such preferred work units were full, while positions at the "basic levels" remained empty from one year to the next for want of college graduates willing to accept such positions.     

Editor's Introduction

This issue of Chinese Education and Society and the last deal with aspects of the examination system in China, in particular the gaokao (college and university entrance examination) and the huihao (upper middle school general graduation examination). The aim is to provide background information regarding policies, recent reforms, opinions, suggestions, and criticisms. The first issue identified the position of the National Examinations Authority on policy and reforms, as well as their thinking on a number of related issues.     

Editor's Introduction

The topic chosen for this issue deals with the problem of relating educational plans and policies to research that provides factual bases for the decisions involved. In European education, the concern for rational bases for planning and policy decisions is rather novel, but it grows in urgency as the striving for structural changes and curriculum modernization gains momentum in all countries.     

Editor's Introduction

Chairman Mao, our great teacher, leader, commander, and helmsman, commands a formidable revolutionary army of hundreds of millions to unleash a general offensive on Liu Shao-ch'i, who is the foremost authority in the party taking the capitalist line. Hundreds of millions of people concentrate their fire to pursue and attack in order to criticize thoroughly the revisionist line Liu Shao-ch'i has promoted in politics, economics, culture, and education. The great proletarian cultural revolution has entered a brand new stage of decisive war!     

Editor's Introduction

The responses which we received on the appearance of the first issue of Western European Education have been gratifying: they confirmed the need for a journal to help overcome the linguistic and geographic obstacles that tend to keep American educators unaware of the many interesting developments in modern West European education. The responses also welcomed the access — offered by this journal — to relevant sources and documents that are otherwise not available through bibliographic channels; and the readers seem to favor the policy that each issue be devoted to a selected theme and each article be introduced by editorial explanations. The layout of these introductions has aroused justified criticism, and we hope the present issue will show improvement in this respect.     

Editor's Introduction

I believe teacher educators resist changing teacher education because there's simply a lot of inertia in the field. We do what we do because it is the way we've always done it. If we have always had a program that requires two years of liberal studies, a few foundations courses, a set of methods courses and a field experience, why change it? Why take the time to analyze what's wrong with a system that we don't think is broken? (Ladson-Billings, 2001 Ladson-Billings, G. 2001. Crossing over to Canaan: The journey of new teachers in diverse classrooms., San Francisco: Jossey Bass.  [Google Scholar], p. 7)     

Editor's Introduction

One accurate measurement is worth a thousand expert opinions.

—Rear Admiral Grace Hopper (qtd. in Sheehan, 2010)

Nineteenth-century freshman composition instruction at Madras University, based on a classical paradigm, prepared students for writing in professional discourses. Examining this pedagogy from today's perspective raises, for the field of postcolonial theory, questions of whether the British, who offered Indians a curriculum comparable to those at important British universities, viewed Indians as inferior beings or those needing help to become modern.     

Editor's Introduction

During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Germany was perhaps the dominant country on the international scene in higher education. In fact, already by the mid-eighteenth century, German institutions had begun to attain recognition for leadership in learning. Students from many countries journeyed then to Germany in pursuit of profound scholarship and professional skills. The case of the Russian genius Mikhail V. Lomonosov, who studied humanities at Marburg and metallurgy at the Freiberg Academy, is an outstanding example.     

Editor's Introduction

The articles on physics, chemistry, and mathematics that we are publishing in this issue of Chinese Education illustrate the significant changes in educational policy that have taken place in China since the death of Mao Zedong and the overthrow of the Gang of Four in late 1976. Most of them were selected from the journal Secondary School Science Teaching and deal with the newly compiled uniform textbooks for high schools in the full-time ten-year system. (The ten-year system includes five years of elementary school and five of secondary. In rural China, where the great majority live, schooling is usually offered for seven years or less, and often on a part-time basis. It is usually financed by the local populace with some help from the government.) The uniform texts, which began to appear in late 1977, replace the locally written instructional material produced during the Cultural Revolution period, 1966-1976.     

Editor's Introduction

Resolutely carrying out Chairman Mao's instructions on the proletarian revolution in education, the poor and lower-middle peasants of the Layaotzu, Sungshukou, and Waisantaokou production brigades of the Aihui people's commune in Aihui County (Heilungkiang Province) entered the schools in November last year, seizing back the power in education in rural areas and smashing complete domination of the schools by bourgeois intellectuals. The poor and lower-middle peasants are masters of culture; they have become the main force in the proletarian revolution in education in the rural areas. They have carried out the recent instruction issued by our great leader Chairman Mao: "In the countryside, schools and colleges should be managed by the poor and lower-middle peasants - the most reliable ally of the working class."