Accommodation and Adjudication in Student–Administration Conflicts: The Difficult Legacy of the U.S. Supreme Court

In this article, we consider a series of U.S. Supreme Court rulings that place public school students under an expansive shield of constitutional rights while often hampering the ability of administrators to engage in flexible and creative conflict resolution in the context of the school's mission. The court's readiness to adjudicate a large range of student–administration conflicts has weakened schools’ ability to pragmatically accommodate conflicts that, by their nature, do not have principled solutions at the level of the law. We argue that as long as adjudication is the privileged course of action, the court seems locked into a philosophical zigzag, now endowing 8th graders with due process and constitutional rights, now framing them as mere “subjects.” To strengthen schools as educational and moral institutions, school leaders need to be able to construct systems of accommodation that are sensitive to their special educational nature and mission.     

Friendship and the Public Stage: Revisiting Hannah Arendt's Resistance to “Political Education”

Hannah Arendt's essays about the 1957 crisis over efforts of a group of youth, the “Little Rock Nine,” to desegregate a high school in Little Rock, Arkansas, reveal a tension in her vision of the “public.” In this article Aaron Schutz and Marie Sandy look closely at the experiences of the youth desegregating the school, especially those of Elizabeth Eckford, drawing upon them to trace a continuum of forms of public engagement in Arendt's work. This ranges from arenas of “deliberative friendship,” where unique individuals collaborate on common efforts, to a more conflictual “public stage,” where groups act in solidarity to change aspects of the public world. While Arendt famously asserted in her essay “The Crisis in Education” that political capacities should not be taught in schools, it makes more sense to see this argument as focused on what she sometimes called the conflictual “public stage,” reflecting the experience of the Little Rock Nine. In contrast, Schutz and Sandy argue that Arendt's own work implies that “deliberative friendship,” as described in her essay “Philosophy and Politics” and elsewhere, should be part of everyday practices in classrooms and schools.     

CURRENT ARTICLES

In the post-pillarized society of the Netherlands, formal religious education still is structured according to religious dividing lines. “Religion” in confessional schools is a compulsory subject; in public schools, taking a so-called neutral position with regard to religious traditions, “Religion” is an optional subject (Protestant, Roman Catholic, or Islamic religious education or Humanistic World View Education), taught to pupils on parents’ request. Nowadays, due to processes of modernization, globalization, and individualization, the position of religion in society has changed and subsequently the position of “Religion” as a subject in classes has changed. These days for principals and teachers in public schools it is urgent to reflect on their positionality regarding (religious and secular) worldview education. In this contribution we present our findings from document analysis and from (focus group) interviews with principals, and from observations in public schools, resulting in a plea for “Life Orientation for all” as a compulsory subject in all schools for all pupils.     

法象与性情:子张之儒的从政之道

子张之儒是先秦儒家重要一派,将出土文献、传世文献和相关的理论作品串联成篇,可窥其思想演变之脉络。具体讲,该学派在孔子殁后致力于发扬孔门从政思想,逐渐构造出一套较为完善的政治哲学理论。其核心纲领可用“居敬而行简”概括,其中“居敬”属于从政者自身修养方面,以追求君子“威仪”为目标;“行简”则属于从政者莅民为政方面,以治理百姓为内容。在此理论框架之下,子张及其后学还概括出“虑以下人”“五美四恶”“敬刑为德”“明于礼乐”“知民之性”等理念,并试图回答“政治是什么”“政治何以可能”等哲学问题,客观上促成了当时学界关于人性善恶之讨论。     

民国时期学校“性教育”的基本特征及现实启示

民国时期性教育的实施是家庭、学校、社会共同努力的结果,但因当时的父母囿于旧道德观念的束缚,缺乏性教育所需知识,而社会又处于百废待兴的状态,性教育的重担自然落到了学校的肩膀上。整体而言,民国时期的学校“性教育”存在以下特征：在教育目的上,经历了从“教性”到“教养”的转变;在教育主体上,主张以“教师为主,医师为辅,父母配合”;在教育内容上,主张建立渗透式的泛课程体系,将性教育渗透进具体的课程中进行教授;在教育方式上,按照“分阶段、分性别、个别与团体相结合”的方式实行。分析民国时期学校“性教育”的特征,对现今我国学校“性教育”的发展具有启示意义。     

Towards Quality Systems Development in NSW Public Schools

While the notion of “quality systems” is firmly established in many public and private sectors, this approach to quality management is only beginning to emerge in schools. After an initial discussion of the notion “systems thinking” and “quality systems,” this article suggests a model for the essential criteria for quality systems in schools. This model is then utilised to evaluate 3 widely accepted approaches to quality management within Australia for their applicability to the school situation – ISO 9001/4 2000, Investors in People and the Australian Business Excellence Framework. While it is suggested that all 3 approaches could have some relevance to quality systems development in schools, the unique culture of schools would present significant challenges to their utilisation.     

The “Other White”: Mexican Americans and the Impotency of Whiteness in the Segregation and Desegregation of Texan Public Schools

This article analyzes the legal classification of Mexican Americans as “other white” as argued in a number of critical court cases that beginning in the 1930s up to the 1970s attempted to desegregate public schools in Texas. Since the Texas constitution declared school segregation as being only for “colored children,” Mexican Americans in their fight against de facto segregation sought to claim their legal classification as white. My objective is to further analyze these cases as presented in the literature in order to examine what the relationship between Mexican American whiteness as a legal category versus their “otherness” as a social category says about the vital role of public schools in reproducing, as well as creating, social, political, and economic marginalization.     

从“政策依赖”到“制度自觉”:“公民同招”新政的利弊分析

义务教育阶段的“择校热”和“就近入学”一直备受争议,民办学校的兴起为择校提供了新选择,也冲击着义务教育的发展格局。民众对优质教育资源的渴求助长了各地招生乱象,严重影响了义务教育的公益性与普惠性。国家全面推行的“公民同招”政策在有力维护教育起点公平,确保良性竞争的同时,也面临着现实困境和深层隐忧:公平起步与均衡依赖的鸿沟、自主择校与政策调剂的分歧、民办与公办学校的分化。平衡两类学校的协同发展,稳步推进政策,不能搞“短平快和一刀切”。需通过优化资源、维护程序公正,加强校际治理,逐步冲破改革阵痛,促使义务教育优质均衡发展,把新政之弊降到最小。     

Behind the School Walls: The School Community in French and English Boarding Schools for Girls, 1810–1867

This article develops a comparative analysis of lay boarding schools for girls in France and England in the first part of the nineteenth century, demonstrating that the character of school life in the two countries differed markedly. Contemporary observers such as Matthew Arnold, Henry Montucci and Jacques Demogeot visited boys' schools on either side of the Channel and contrasted the “barrack‐life” of lycées in France with the more domestic arrangements of English public schools, but they did not visit the private boarding schools for girls that were multiplying in both England and France in the first half of the nineteenth century. Evidence collected from inspection records, school memoirs and pedagogical treatises, however, reveals differences between female establishments on either side of the Channel that echoed, but were not identical to, the contrasts between English and French boys' schools. Different ideas on the nature and role of women interacted with the separate educational traditions of the two countries to construct two distinct institutional models of female schooling which could be termed “domestic” for England, and “conventual” for France. The article compares female institutions in the two countries to uncover some of the key features of these distinct models of schooling. In highlighting the way ideas about gender shaped school communities, it points to differences in the prevailing conception of femininity on either side of the Channel.

English girls' schools tended to be small in size and self‐consciously familial and homely in atmosphere and organization. Many schoolmistresses deliberately limited the number of pupils they would accept in order to preserve the intimate and domestic character of their establishments. This reflects the influence of a conception of femininity emphasizing women's maternal nature and domestic role, and women teachers' need to conform to this ideal in order to preserve their middle‐class status. French schools, by contrast, were more often large, hierarchically organized establishments. Unlike their English counterparts, they tended to be housed in buildings specially adapted as schools. The institutional character of French schools owed much to the educational patterns of convent schooling and to the powerful position occupied by women in religious orders.

The differences between these two conceptions of the school affected the conditions of school life and relations between pupils and teachers in concrete ways. In England, schoolmistresses tended to cultivate warm relationships with their pupils, and often characterized their role in maternal terms. Naturally, in practice not all relationships between teachers and their charges were as harmonious as the language of motherhood might suggest, yet at a time when spinsters might be labelled “redundant” or “unnatural”, drawing on a maternal metaphor was one of the ways in which schoolmistresses, who were for the most part unmarried and childless, could reconcile their situation with prevailing ideals of femininity. At the same time, motherhood was the only socially legitimate position through which a woman could exercise authority. In keeping with the familial atmosphere, warm relations between pupils were also encouraged in English girls' schools, and girls often enjoyed considerable liberty in the collective “room of one's own” that school could offer. In France, schoolmistresses tended to maintain more distant relations with their pupils, drawing on the precedents established by women in religious orders to develop authoritative public personae. At the same time, pupils were strictly supervised and attempts were made to limit the intimacy of friendships between schoolgirls. Schoolgirl memoirs are peppered with references to “the school walls” that heightened pupils' sense of enclosure and contained them within a rigid system of discipline and order. In practice, girls at school were often able to establish warm friendships with their peers and to circumvent the rules, yet such intimacies and rebellions went against the grain. The school regulations preserved in the archives evoke strictly ordered days and continual supervision of pupils; they reveal a preoccupation with order and discipline and the same suspicion of female autonomy that Bonnie Smith and Gabrielle Houbre have identified in the work of Catholic educators whose central concern was the preservation of a feminine innocence.

The interaction of differing ideas about the nature and role of women with distinct inherited educational traditions and with contrasting ideas about the state's role in education resulted in the construction of two distinct models of female schooling in England and France. The effect was that if, in both countries, the stated aim of the education provided by girls' boarding schools was to educate girls for motherhood, behind the school walls the character of daily life in English and French establishments differed in significant ways. Comparing the structure of schools and experience of schoolmistresses and their pupils in these different institutions highlights the ways in which ideas about gender helped shape the school community and uncovers the roots of the contrasting evolution of female education on either side of the Channel.     

BOOK REVIEW

Critical reviews from “outside”, notably educational sociologists arguing mainly from a British context, have caused some ripples, and maybe even waves, among school effectiveness researchers. To a large extent these external criticisms and the overall nature of the response from school effectiveness researchers are neatly summarized in the following quote from Townsend: “be like us”, say the critics, and the answer is “no thanks”. In this article the arguments form the “external” critics and the response from school effectiveness researchers will not be repeated. Some of the topics in the debate will be revisited, however. The first one is the discussion with respect to the impact of “contextual” or composition effects concerning the average socioeconomic background of students in schools and classrooms. This is one area, that bears upon the foundations of the school effectiveness concept, although it is not, as the critics would have it, a neglected area. The second one concerns conceptualization and theoretical explanation of school effectiveness, as the debate may not have been sufficiently explicit on this issue. The rest of the paper deals with “foundational” issues in school effectiveness research that have not been settled decisively and with changes in perspectives on learning and instruction and educational technology that provide serious challenges. On these issues there is reason for self-criticism and realism in the way school effectiveness research can make progress.     

Perceived Advantages and Disadvantages of an Online Charter School

This study examines data from focus group discussions with parents, students, and teachers at an online charter school. Standardized achievement test scores of children at the online charter school are compared with those in a similar school and across the state. Overall, the constituents involved in the online charter school were satisfied with the school's educational service. Students at the charter school performed lower than the state average of all schools (including public schools), but they performed better when compared to a similar school as defined by the state board of education. The online charter school experienced improvement in the report card rating from a designation of “Academic Watch” to “Continuous Improvement.” Evidence from constituent satisfaction and increasing student achievement suggests that the online charter school in this study is becoming competitive with traditional public schools.     

The Social Funding of Race: The Role of Schooling

Our nation is suffused in questions of race and racism. Despite much scholarly and public discussion we struggle to undo long-held assumptions about race and how it functions. This article looks at race from the perspective of a public commodity that the society “funds” in order to make it seem real and intractable. Throughout the article there are multiple examples of the everyday, commonsense things people in this society do to fund the concept and give it meaning from our children's earliest days. The challenge in a society that so “fully funds” race is it seems near impossible to “defund” the concept in teacher education to allow new teachers to approach the classroom as a space where race is not determinant and highly predictive of student achievement.     

CIVIC FRAGMENTATION OR VOLUNTARY ASSOCIATION? HABERMAS,FRASER, AND CHARTER SCHOOL SEGREGATION

In this essay, Terri Wilson puts the argument developed by Kathleen Knight Abowitz that charter schools could be considered as counterpublic spaces into interaction with empirical research that explores patterns of voluntary self‐segregation in charter schools. Wilson returns to the theoretical tension between Jürgen Habermas and Nancy Fraser over the inclusivity of the public sphere. Wilson argues that Fraser's concept of counterpublic space rests on an oversimplification of Habermas's concept of the public sphere and, further, that justifying school choice through Fraser's “multiplicity of publics” offers few resources for questioning the increasing segregation of schools. According to Wilson, Habermas's normative project—and his concept of “idealization,” in particular—offers both an answer to Fraser's critique and a better application of “the public sphere” to the issue of school choice. Wilson concludes by considering how Habermas's understanding of the public sphere as a normative ideal might serve as a useful resource for evaluating the public‐ness of charter school reform.     

The revival of Confucianism in Chinese schools: a historical-political review

This article examines the “back to tradition” movement in Chinese schools and its political nature. It focuses on the launch of the “education in Chinese traditional virtues” project in the 1980s and various new developments at the present time, which continue a revival of Confucianism in Chinese society and education. The paper looks into the domestic and international background of the movement, the political nature of the Confucian tradition, and the government's support for the movement. The essay explores a resurgence of Confucianism in Chinese schools through moral education and the larger political purpose it serves. The article reveals how a popular grass roots education movement reflects particular social and political needs during changing times and how pedagogical functions of an education initiative become entangled with, and even overshadowed by, political demands within a politically centralised system.     

From “survival” to “leadership”: the practice of civic education in Australia

This chapter describes the study as it was conducted in three public high schools in Sydney: a governmental comprehensive high school, a non-government or private high school, and a government “selective school”. The results suggest that civic education revolved around an identifiable, yet not clearly articulated, set of civic values. For teachers, civic education's main goal was to prepare students for harmonious integration into Australia's highly multicultural society, to maintain and reinforce social cohesion, and, consequently, to foster acceptance of diversity. For students, civic education was an enigma. Although they participated in civic education experiences they could rarely identify them as such. Furthermore, few students could identify subject matter of civic education through what was taught in school subjects.     

Community participation in school governance: The Maasai community in Kenya

The Free Primary Education (FPE) policy in Kenya created a dichotomy between the widespread notion that the government should be responsible for everything and the reality that the government had stopped recruiting teachers. This article investigates the current state of the accountability system for school governance in public schools in the Maasai community in Loitokitok District, Kajiado County, by focusing on the client power of parents and communities. A case study of eight schools in the Masai community reveals that a sense of “working together” and a substantial degree of client power are present in various school initiatives. Elements that enhance client power include information sharing, collaboration and coordination with stakeholders, critical-thinking ability, respect and trust, and other unique efforts. The study also indicates the limitations of the dichotomous lens of “service provider” and “client” and questions the instrumental approach to community participation in school management.

     

Home and school contributions to science achievement in elementary schools in israel

This article reexamines the relative status of “school variables” versus “home variables” in explaining the variance in science achievement, based on data from Israeli elementary schools in 1984. The contribution of school variables was found to be “subject specific”—larger in subjects taught in school and less dependent on general ability, and “system specific”—larger in low socioeconomic schools and small in high socioeconomic schools.     

Mayoral Leadership Matters: Lessons Learned From Mayoral Control of Large Urban School Systems

“Mayoral takeover” has emerged as a major reform option for struggling urban districts since it was launched in Boston in 1992 and Chicago in 1995. This article examines the design, implementation, and the effects of mayoral-led school systems. Our research addresses issues that are critical to systemwide improvement: Are there variation in how mayors govern their schools? How can mayors “add values” to current school reform efforts in their cities? Have more resources been provided for teaching and learning? Is the public more confident in their city's school system? Are test scores improving? In addressing these issues of student outcomes and management improvement, we highlight lessons learned from our research project's mixed-methods approach, including case studies and statistical analyses using a multiyear database on a purposeful sample of 100 urban districts.     

Young People,Biblical Narrative and “Theologizing”: A UK Perspective

Religious Education is a curriculum subject provided as entitlement for all students in UK public schools. Biblical narratives appear for every student age group, usually in Christian studies modules. The Biblos research project was founded to investigate how biblical narrative might be taught with integrity in public schools in a society labelled variously post-Christian, post-modern, plural, and secular. It has completed four phases of life, summarized in this article. Particular attention is given to the most recent research that sets student attitudes toward biblical narrative against their familial and cultural background. Consideration is given to what it means for students actively to engage with biblical narrative and therefore to “theologize” for themselves.     

THE PRIVATIZED PUBLIC: ANTAGONISM FOR A RADICAL DEMOCRATIC POLITICS IN SCHOOLS?

In an extended era of privatization initiatives, when accountability principles and competitive business logics pervade school discourse and practice, what is left of the “public” part of public schooling? When market rationality privileges individualism and competition and provides much of the justification for the aims of U.S. schools, how is the notion of the public good evidenced? In this essay Deron Boyles makes the claim that public schools inordinately function as private markets—as places where a unidirectional narrative of “givens” reinforce individualism, competition, and corporatization under the guise of merit, testing, and school‐business partnerships.