Fertile Soil? How Information does (and does not) Shape Attitudes toward School Choice in Rural America

ABSTRACT

The role of political factors, specifically of public opinion, in the relatively low penetration of charter schools into rural America remains unclear. We use 8 years of national survey data to demonstrate that rural residents express less support for charter schools than residents of other locales do. We attribute this gap to differences in familiarity with charter schools across these locales rather than to differences in satisfaction with local schools or to differences in demographics, party affiliation, or political ideology. However, using a survey experiment and an oversample of districts with charter schools, we show that increased exposure to these schools or information about them does not boost support in rural communities. Lastly, we demonstrate a similar urban-rural gap in support for private school choice policies such as vouchers and tax credits for private school scholarships.     

甘肃农村中等职业教育实施区域发展战略的几个问题

按照甘肃省委确定的区域发展新战略,研究我省加快发展面向农村职业教育的几个问题:一是改革"以县为主"的办学体制,走"市州组团,县区成网,以城带乡,多级推动"的发展路子,拓展"三教统筹"的办学思想;二是强化各级政府统筹职业教育发展的责任,健全县域职业教育培训网络,强化职业教育资源的统筹协调和综合利用,加大培养适应农业和农村发展需要的专业人才力度;三是破解农村职业学校毕业生的转移输出就业难题,推进城、乡区域合作,支持各级各类学校积极参与新型农民、进城务工人员和农村劳动力转移培训.     

义务教育的均衡发展是教育平等的基石

Balanced development of compulsory education is not only the cornerstone of education equity, but also the fundamental part for realizing a harmonious society. There have been several achievements in balancing the development of compulsory education in China, such as narrowing the gaps in compulsory education between rural, urban, and other areas. However, the development of compulsory education is still confronted with several issues, including the gaps between rural and urban schools, the gaps between teacher’s situations in rural and urban area, higher drop-out rates of rural compulsory education than that of the national average level, etc. Based on the analysis of these issues and reasons, the suggestions for the policy-makers are as follows: (1) it must be further clarified that governments at all levels must take all responsibilities for the balanced development of compulsory education so as to integrate local authorities’ input and the central government’s subsidies; (2) the allocation mechanism of resources for compulsory education should be set up with “qualitative and fair growth” as its aim; (3) The quality standard for compulsory education based on the national curriculum standard should be worked out for playing the role of quality inspection in the fair development of compulsory education, and a relevant system of responsibility should also be established; (4) A national unified card for compulsory education should be adopted, which would help abolish extra fees for non-permanent-resident students receiving compulsory education in other places and (5) civilian-sponsored schools should be encouraged to offer compulsory education. __________ Translated from Jiaoyu Yanjiu 教育研究 (Educational Research), 2007, (2): 3–11     

Current legal trends regarding abortions for minors: a dilemma for counselors

According to several US Supreme Court decisions, minors have the right to abortions, yet various conflicts cause some uncertainty for counselors and other professionals working with minors. In defining the role of the school counselor with regard to abortions, Duncan and Moffett (1974) explained that counselors should establish a setting for clients to examine feelings and evaluate alternatives. They advised counselors against imposing their views and attitudes on clients. Walleat (1975) summarized the counselor's responsibilities as follows: view abortion in relation to the student's total involvement rather than a crisis situation; work in conjunction with other community and school programs; help students "process" information; and help students use information about abortion, even when schools fail to supply that information. Additionally, Walleat emphasized that there were possible legal and ethical issues regarding schools providing abortion information. The extent to which schools can or should provide abortion information to minors is unclear. Burgum and Anderson (1975) made some recommendations to help counselors avoid lawsuits regarding abortions. They suggested that counselors give advice only in those areas in which they are competent according to their education and work experience. In view of the proposed legislation and legal shift toward parental notification, counselors of minors should strongly encourage their clients to discuss their situation with parents. The major questions are: how far must counselors go in providing information to parents of minors; and is the legal responsibility strong enough to require counselors to break confidentiality under certain conditions. Until a major court case or legislation addresses these questions, the school counselor's role is undefined. Because parental notification about abortion for minors is unclear, professional guidelines are urgently needed to aid counselors. Professional counseling groups need to address the unresolved issues in a position paper or other materials. Until such time, the following recommendations should prove of value to counselors: counselors should urge minors to discuss abortion plans with parents and involve families in the counseling process, if possible; counselors should consider the social mores of the community; counselors should work through their national, state, and local professional organizations for directions and guidelines on abortion counseling and dissemination of abortion information for minors; and counselors should be knowledgeable about appropriate referral agencies dealing with abortions.     

District officials’ perspectives regarding factors that impede the attainment of quality basic education in a province in South Africa

The provision of quality basic education is essential as it can ensure that all learners have an equal opportunity to succeed in life. This paper discusses district officials’ perspectives regarding some factors that impede the achievement of quality basic education in schools under their jurisdiction. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews conducted with district officials in eight districts in one province of South Africa. Data analysis followed the iterative approach. Findings reveal that district officials viewed the state of education in their districts and circuit as unsatisfactory due to: low teacher morale, schools’ lack of confidence in their districts and the perceived neglect of the General Education and Training Band. It is argued that improved teacher working conditions, use of better service delivery model by the districts and education department, and full prioritisation of the GET Band are needed in these districts. In conclusion, to achieve social justice in education, corrective measures should be premised upon the understanding of the social and contextual issues as these represent the crippling factors in the province.     

贵州农村基础教育课程改革调查--以思南县农村基础教育课程改革为例

2005年,我国基础教育阶段要全面推行新课程改革.本轮课程改革对城市和农村的要求是一致的.由于贵州省城市与农村教育的发展不平衡,如果不考虑到农村地区教育存在的实际"差距"、实际"困难",统一要求在同一时间里执行新的课程标准,这是不现实的.思南县的教育在贵州具有代表性,本文提出的问题,期望能引起有关部门领导的高度重视.     

关于区域教育均衡发展策略的管理伦理分析

区域教育均衡发展是近年来基础教育发展的热点问题,很多理论研究者和教育实践工作者对区域教育均衡发展进行了不同角度的研讨和探索,部分区域开始实践探索区域教育均衡发展的各种推进策略。本文试图从管理的公正、人本、效益的伦理性原则对这些策略存在的伦理风险进行分析,以期进一步改善区域教育均衡发展,并从区域教育管理的层面,提出了加强系统性思考,进一步关注管理效益和制度调整,重视学校内生性发展等建议。     

更多的教育投入能带来更好的教育吗?

随着新时代我国社会主要矛盾的变化,期盼"更好的教育"成为教育改革发展的出发点和落脚点。长期以来,政府教育投入不足一直被认为是教育不够好的主要原因,但政策实践和理论研究并没有发现仅靠增加教育投入就能带来更好的教育,这可能意味着,教育投入结构及其使用组织和管理也非常重要。从深入剖析教育的基本功能入手,并在区分教育的直接产出和间接产出的基础上所进行的经验研究表明:第一,教育投入多的区域并不一定能有更好的教育。原因在于,优质教育资源聚集的地区由于承载力不足,带来学校规模小、效益低等问题;而农村或偏远地区人口分散、空间距离远,承载力过剩,导致教育供给成本高,且浪费严重。对此,在政策选择上一方面应着力优化区域空间结构,严格限制城市规模,匹配性地限制城市常住人口数量与在校学生数量,从而提供公平而有质量的教育;另一方面,应积极落实党的十九大提出的乡村振兴战略和区域协调发展,加快农村人口城镇化进程,完善人口转移机制。第二,从教育投入的结构来看,要想获得"更好的教育",办学条件的影响最大,这也反映出新时代我国义务教育发展进入到新阶段,办学条件标准"一刀切",但执行中弹性太大,优质学校达标困难。为此应加快研究制定小规模学校办学条件标准,因地制宜,全面加强乡村小规模学校和乡镇寄宿制学校建设,保证小规模学校的基本办学条件,切实加强可移动的和对教育质量贡献度大的资源配置,保证必要教育教学活动的全面开展。第三,教育的产出是多方面、综合性的,现实中甚至会出现不同产出之间的矛盾,因此必须清晰判断"更好的教育"需要哪类教育产出。研究发现,要想获得"更好的教育",与教育产出的经济效益相比,社会效益更为重要——这主要表现在学校的服务半径和所提供的学位数方面。由于低龄儿童的特殊性,义务教育规定就近入学,就近入学凸显了学校服务半径和学位数的重要性。虽然两基达标解决了人人有学上的问题,但随着人民群众对更好教育需求的日益增长,教育发展不平衡不充分日益明显,如何让老百姓就近公平地享受优质教育资源取决于合理的划片,而合理的划片有赖学校的服务半径和学校提供学位的能力。     

国际视野下教师教育者的界定

教师教育者这一概念在当前国际上并没有统一的界定,但这一界定又是开展教师教育者相关研究的基础,因此首先需要在国际视野下探讨当前专业组织、不同国家及研究者对于教师教育者的界定,在此基础上将教师教育者界定为首要或者主要承担教师教育的教学与研究工作,并努力达成相关的资质要求和促进自身专业发展的专业人员,就目前而言,该界定下的教师教育者主要是指高等教育中的教师教育者。     

教育互动发展联盟——城乡教育均衡发展的实践创新

推进城乡教育均衡发展是我国基础教育发展的首要任务,而从县域内推进城乡教育均衡发展提升到市域层面是大势所趋.成都市结合三圈层空间结构特点,提出城乡教育互动发展联盟实践模式.该模式将成都三个圈层20个区（市）县组成10对“一对一”的互动发展联盟体,通过跨区域学校结对,以多样化推进方式促进城乡学校共同发展.城乡教育互动发展联盟实现了优质教育资源在“全域成都”的统筹配置,有效促进了成都教育圈层融合和高位均衡发展.     

Foreword

Despite growing interest in the condition of school facilities as a dimension of school finance adequacy, reliable measures of capital stock for large samples of schools are hard to come by. In this article, we offer new methods for (a) measuring the existing capital stock of public schools, (b) defining adequacy in school facilities, and (c) measuring the cost of bringing existing school facilities up to an adequate standard. We apply our procedures to all school districts in Michigan, one of the few states that offers no state aid to local districts for the construction of capital facilities. Our estimates indicate large variations in school buildings and facilities across local communities that are highly correlated with local property wealth. Because we use publicly available data that are recently available for school districts nationwide, these methods can be readily replicated for other states.     

Mining social media divides: an analysis of K-12 U.S. School uses of Twitter

This study utilizes public data mining to explore participation divides of all available K-12 institutional Twitter accounts in the U.S. (n?=?8275 accounts, n?=?9,216,853 tweets). Results indicated that U.S. schools used Twitter to broadcast information on a variety of topics in a unidirectional manner and that hashtags included a variety of intended purposes, including affinity spaces, education topics, emotive language, and events. Those schools in wealthier, more populated areas were more likely to use Twitter, with wealthy, suburban schools being the most likely to use it and poor, rural schools being the least likely. Furthermore, factors such as charter school status and urbanity influenced the content of school tweets on key issues, with schools in more populated areas tweeting more about coding and college than schools in less populated areas and charter schools tweeting more about college and the politicized educational issue of common core than non-charters. These results reveal participation differences between schools based upon demographics and provides a basis for conducting future large-scale work on publicly available artifacts, such as school tweets, that may be meaningfully used as education research data.     

新农村“三化”建设与农村职业教育专业设置互动研究

农业产业化、农村城镇化以及农业现代化是解决三农问题的发展战略,农村职业教育应充分发挥其能动性,以专业设置为切入点,为三农服务。农村职业学校要紧密结合农业产业结构调整、农业现代化、农村城镇化以及农业信息化等进程加强完善相关专业的设置。     

农村寄宿制教育及其应有的教育理念

农村寄宿制学校在近年来已经成为我国解决西部地区城乡教育均衡发展、少年儿童入学难及农村留守儿童教育问题的一种重要手段。农村寄宿制教育不应仅仅是一种满足社会教育公平需要的教育形式,而且也应该成为一种具有特色的教育类型。为此,农村寄宿制学校应该在集体主义教育、素质教育、养成教育、情感教育理念的指导下,充分利用寄宿制的优势,并结合农村学校的特点进行大胆的教育教学改革和创新,形成具有中国特色的农村寄宿制教育模式。     

US principals’ attitudes about and experiences with single-sex schooling

Despite a lack of scientific evidence supporting the use of single-sex education, the number of US public schools offering single-sex education has increased. However, our understanding as to why decision-makers have implemented single-sex education is lacking. To address this gap, we surveyed US public school principals and assessed their attitudes about and experiences with single-sex schooling. Sixty-seven principals from single-sex schools and 193 principals from co-educational schools participated. The results indicated that principals who had experience with single-sex schooling tended to have more positive attitudes about single-sex schooling, viewed it as more effective, and more often evoked gender-essentialist rationales for the use of single-sex schooling than did co-educational principals. However, both single-sex and co-educational principals noted issues with single-sex schooling. It was concluded that single-sex schooling is not a silver bullet to educational reform and that when single-sex schooling is implemented, one set of issues and problems is substituted for another.     

Improving teacher quality: lessons from America's No Child Left Behind

How developed countries train, recruit and retain their schoolteachers is an area of considerable interest in education today. In this paper we consider how the US is addressing the issue of teacher quality by holding schools and school districts accountable for ensuring that all teachers of core subjects are ‘highly qualified’ by the end of the 2005–2006 school year. Part of the hugely important No Child Left Behind Act, this ‘highly qualified’ teacher requirement links billions of dollars of Federal funding to ensuring that schools and school districts develop strategies to meet these targets. We consider how successful this policy has been in two case study states: Wisconsin and California. What emerges is a mandate for change which emphasizes teachers' content knowledge over pedagogic skills, which reveals discrepancies in the certification, training and administration of the profession across different states, and which sharply reminds us of the difficulties faced by even the apparently simple policy of requiring high quality teachers by law.     

夏威夷教师教育的质量与种类：远程教育模式

美国目前正面临着严重的教师短缺,尤其是缺乏合格的优秀教师。这种现象遍及于幼儿园到高中。产生这种现象的原因是大批教师退休、教师工资的低廉、美国校园内的暴力和联邦政府所规定的考试及规章制度等。这种现象在夏威夷也不例外。教育的质量和公平是师资培训和招生的核心问题。这个问题对于夏威夷偏远地区的少数民族学生则显得更为重要。根据Banks(2003年)及Collnick和Chinn(2002年)所提到的多元文化理论,本文将介绍2006年的一项调查。该调查研究报告以夏威夷教育学院和夏威夷大学系统的511位师生及当地居民为对象,检视教育学院招生及指导职前教师的做法,包括其偏远地区的岛屿——夏威夷岛(Hawaiyi)、可爱岛(Kauayi)、茂依岛(Maui)、摩洛开依岛(Molokayi)及蓝尼岛(Lanayi)等。这项研究显示了在偏远地区为少数民族学生提供高质量师资教育的种种困难,同时也提出了解决这些问题的有效途径和方法,以适应二十一世纪教师及教师教育的发展。     

Teaching teachers to just say “know”: Reflections on drug education

Psychoactive substance use by students is common in many countries, obliging schools to deliver drug education. However, some jurisdictions do not prepare teachers for engaging their students in honest, knowledge-based education. This article looks at the history and queries the purposes of contemporary drug education. It compares current approaches to drug education with those of other “vice” issues addressed in the history of public schools, such as sex education and temperance education. It critically challenges the question of knowledge definition and production related to psychoactive substances. Finally, some of the theoretical groundings on which to base teacher education for drug education are considered.     

Selecting and Implementing Whole School Improvement Models: A District and School Administrator Perspective

As a growing number of schools and districts are found to be underperforming under the requirements of NCLB, school and district administrators are increasingly searching for research-based whole school improvement programs, including comprehensive school reform (CSR) models and education service providers (ESPs), in order to create dramatic changes and improvements within schools. Limited available research on the effectiveness of these models constrains what education consumers know about how a model will meet the unique needs of a particular school. This article reviews the experience of practitioners who have been through the selection and implementation process of whole school improvement models in order to identify emerging themes that education consumers embarking on this process should consider. During the qualitative data collection process for three Comprehensive School Reform Quality (CSRQ) Center reports, CSRQ staff held phone conversations with school and district administrators. The researchers analyzed 86 of these conversations and grouped them into similar topic areas. Common themes emerged for both the selection process and the implementation of whole school improvement models.     

Domestic migration,benefit spillovers,and local education spending: evidence from China 1993–2009

The idea that educational externalities affect local governments' incentive to provide such service was proposed over a century ago. Several studies have tested the relationship in the US, with mixed results. However, the theory has rarely been tested systematically outside of the US context. Paradoxically the unique household registration system in China makes the study of educational benefit spillover simpler to grasp theoretically and easier to handle empirically. A dynamic panel-data analysis that spans 17 years across 31 provinces of China suggests that a one-percentage-point increase in intra-provincial migration rate would decrease non-personnel spending in the following year by 23, 30, and 45 yuan per student for elementary schools, junior middle schools, and senior middle schools respectively. Narrowing the focus only on rural education funding, this study also shows that intra-provincial migration negatively affects rural spending per student by a similar magnitude. While migration and urbanization often bring about prosperity and efficiency gains, the substantial negative consequences of benefit spillovers under a decentralized education system should not be overlooked, especially for non-personnel expense and for rural schools.