Placism in NCLB—How Rural Children are Left Behind

No Child Left Behind (NCLB) has been proclaimed by some as a reform that will improve education for students from all backgrounds, in all locations. The main components of NCLB, however, are biased against students in small and rural schools. This bias, called “placism,” discriminates against people based on where they live. This rural incompatibility is evident in NCLB's accountability provisions, sanctions, and highly qualified teacher provisions. Problems in these areas are the result of ignoring, or distorting, the realities of rural schooling. The accountability provisions are constructed so that small schools will frequently be incorrectly labeled as failing. The sanctions, inappropriate for rural areas, fail to provide solutions to existing rural challenges. The “highly qualified” teacher provisions make it more difficult, not easier, for rural districts to attract and retain competent teachers. Unless these injustices are corrected, NCLB will serve to decrease educational quality for rural students.     

On General Education in Higher Education Institutions of China Mainland

This thesis points out the main problems consisting in general education in higher education institutions （HEIs） of China mainland. General education need to be further improved and so does the quality of general education curriculum. The faculty construction should be more reasonable; the teaching administration models and the evaluation system should also be perfected. This thesis is also aimed to put forward the countermeasures： to pay more attention to general education, improve the quality of the general education curriculum with every effort, develop the faculty urgently, ameliorate the teaching administration models and establish the scientific and proper evaluation system of general education curriculum, and so on.     

No Child Left Behind and the Federal Role in Education: Evolution or Revolution?

As the most significant revision of federal education policy in decades, No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) raises the question of whether it represents a sharp departure from past policy or simply the next phase in the evolution of that policy. This article examines the implementation history of Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act from the original legislation enacted in 1965 to the most recent embodiment in NCLB. It concludes that, although NCLB has expanded federal regulation, this newest version reflects an evolution of the federal role rather than a radical redefinition, with NCLB's design only possible because of profound changes in the state role over the past 20 years.     

Growing Up with Distant Parents: Socialization and Alienation of “Left-Behind” Children in Rural China

An increasing number of left-behind children has emerged in rural China as a result of the large-scale migration of rural farmers to urban cities since the 1990s. With the absence of parent(s) from the family, the left-behind children face crises in socialization and their relationships with their parents are threatened by physical distance. This paper investigates how Chinese left-behind children negotiate the missing roles of parents and how the parent-child relations in such families change over time, through in-depth case studies of two left-behind children with different family backgrounds in rural Henan province.     

The Present Situation, Problems, Countermeasures of Compulsory Education in the Rural Area of Western Region in China

The present condition of rural education in the western region of China is not optimistic. Existing problems include lacking education investment, poor school-running conditions, simplified running pattern and laggard concept of education. The countermeasures are： firstly, governments at all level especially the center one should increase input to accomplish the support the poor project authentically and integrate all sort of social forces; secondly, the government should strengthen the building of teaching team, attach importance to ameliorate the rural teacher＇s wage, their living conditions and improve their professional abilities; thirdly, we should develop the minority education greatly; fourthly, solving the problem of education of girls should be regarded as a strategic case.     

The Significance of Physical Education Content: “Sending the Message” in Physical Education Teacher Education

Mind-body dualism has likely influenced how many view human beings and their behavior—mind (i.e., thinking) is elevated over body (i.e., performing)—even in Physical Education Teacher Education. The problem is that such a perspective makes physical education content (i.e., dance, games, play, and sport) subsidiary to more “intellectual” or “academic” content. This article invites Physical Education Teacher Education faculty to consider how to effectively “send the message” to future physical educators that physical education content is valuable and respectable and in many ways epitomizes intelligent human behavior. Specifically, Physical Education Teacher Education faculty are invited to (a) challenge traditional definitions of intelligence and introduce alternative definitions, (b) participate regularly in their own playgrounds, (c) provide a sufficient dose of activity courses in their curricula, (d) teach activity courses, (e) establish a performance-oriented culture, and (f) administer performance and/or game play evaluations.     

Promoting Compulsory Education in Rural China: What Are the NPOs Doing?

Due to imbalanced social and economic development, education in poverty-stricken rural areas in China is lagging behind that of urban areas. The current study explores the role of the nonprofit organizations (NPOs) involved in rural compulsory education promotion. Results show that the NPOs are providing a variety of programs to promote rural compulsory education, and the types of programs, as well as their implementation strategies and impact, are influenced by their registration statuses and background characteristics. Due to lack of coordination and skills, there still remain service gaps, and the quality of the existing programs is questionable. The article proposes strategies to strengthen the nonprofit sector’s work in rural compulsory education.     

The poverty trap of education: Education–poverty connections in Western China

Traditional studies of development and education focus either on the benefits of education for lifting the poor out of poverty, or on the vicious circle created when poor cannot afford education. This paper adds to the traditional view by also focusing on the poverty trap that is created for families that invest heavily in education without obtaining returns. It offers another perspective on the new education–poverty trap, with the burden of educational costs as cause of poverty and deprivation for low- and middle-income families. Data from a large-scale survey of the Western regions of China shows that the cost of higher education is far beyond low- and middle-income families’ affordability. Chinese households face a dilemma: borrowing money to educate a child or avoiding debt but foregoing education and mobility. While already acknowledged as a major social problem in China, the new poverty–education connection has so far received relatively little scholarly attention.     

“The Equitable Powers of the Judge”: The Conflict Between No Child Left Behind and Court-Ordered Desegregation in Richmond County,Georgia

This article consists of a case study and policy analysis of a conflict between two federal mandates that arose during the initial implementation of the No Child Left Behind Act in 2002 in a southern school system, Richmond County, Georgia. The first part of the article documents the conflict, drawing on primary source documents and interviews with the school superintendent and school board attorney. A U.S. District court judge ruled that the 1972 court order that had mandated county-wide school desegregation was in conflict with No Child Left Behind's public school transfer policy and granted the county a one-year delay so that the school system could study the policy's likely effects. The U.S. Department of Education's response to the judge's ruling instigated a situation that led to a federal-local political disagreement, whose origins and resolution are described. In the article's second section, the author places these events into broader historical perspective, arguing that they reveal how federal policy in elementary and secondary education has shifted during the intervening decades since the Elementary and Secondary Education Act's enactment in 1965. The case highlights the changing federal-district relationship, the equitable implementation of the No Child Left Behind public school choice provision, and the nature of federal authority in education policy, and how it is currently being exercised by the Bush administration.     

A Review of: “Engaging Technology in Theological Education: All that We Can't Leave Behind”

Voice is critical to youth; yet discerning and claiming a public religious voice is complicated, especially as youth encounter values that include or exclude them based on personality, ethnicity, religion, gender identification, ability, social class, or sexual orientation. Drawing from interviews, we analyze influences on youth to discover and speak their religious voices in public spaces, and to claim religious motivations for their public personas and actions. The study uncovers complex relationships among young people's religious awareness, social contexts, inner dynamics, and public religious expressions. These relationships suggest directions for religious education in faith communities, schools, and other public spaces.     

The Merits of Using “Worldview” in Religious Education

This article aims to argue that worldview is a useful concept in religious education because of its encompassing character. In the first part of the article three essential characteristics of “worldview” are distinguished: “worldview” includes religious and secular views; a distinction between organized and personal worldviews should be made; and existential questions are a necessary part of “worldview.” The second part of the article demonstrates how two articles about Grimmitt's distinction between learning about and from religion benefit from using “worldview” and how the authors can address their points more clearly by using the concept and its three essential characteristics.     

EXCERPTS: “The Role of Art in My Life and in Jewish Education”

For Jewish education, as for the Jewish People, the overriding lesson of the Iraqi War is the inadequacy of secular political and social movements as the sole arbiters of “relevance.” Both liberal and conservative ideologies failed in their assessment of the duration of the war and its consequences. Both displayed a moral obtuseness and selectivity from which sensitive people must recoil. From this point on, we Jews need to return to a more venerable, more sacred standard: our collective reading of the will of God, as embodied in the Torah, the Talmudic tradition, and subsequent Jewish encapsulations.