Security, Schooling, and the Consumer's Choice to Segregate

While most literature about security has focused on the role of surveillance and social control in maintaining order in society and in institutions such as schools, this article examines security in relation to consumerism. The article points out that security is big business—not so much a mechanism of social control, but rather an allure made up of enticement and the gratification that comes with consumer activities. Alhough based on research on corporate school security, the article is theoretical. It draws from studies in education, geography, and communication to demonstrate how security has developed into a consumer activity involving suburbanization, technology, self-segregation, and the partitioning of neighborhoods and schools in homogeneous and often-private microsocieties. Adding to studies of schooling that have examined discipline, school structure, the curriculum, and pedagogy in terms of social control, the article examines schooling in relation to the uses of security that lead not so much to surveillance and other controlling mechanisms, but to a freeing of wills and choices that lead to residential isolation and school segregation.     

中学生集体活动参与度的调查与分析报告——以上海市南洋模范中学为例

在当下“重智育”的教育教学实践中,德育视野中中学生“参与意识”的建构未能引起教育界足够的重视。通过以南洋模范中学为样本进行的问卷调查和分析发现,应试压力、学校集体活动设计的趣味性和年级针对性是制约学生参与集体活动的主要因素,而轻松、简约、开放、能够激发动机、满足爱与归属需要和能调剂学习生活的活动则将受到学生的普遍欢迎。相应地,这一现状的改善需要通过学校、学生和社会等多方努力：学校须改善现有的僵化不移的活动设计,并以适当的形式提高学生对集体活动的认可度,此外,以“智育”为中心的社会评价体系也有待进一步修正、完善。     

郴州市中学生闲暇活动的调查研究

以郴州市8所中学的1560名学生为对象,调查了他们的闲暇活动.结果表明:调查对象在闲暇时间以听音乐、体育锻炼为主,学生最喜欢从事的活动是听音乐,其次是体育锻炼,并且有半数以上的学生对目前所在学校组织和安排的校内课外体育活动感到不太满意.因此,呼吁中学各级领导和所有教育工作者,在素质教育和健康教育快速发展的今天,应重视学校体育的重要组成部分———课外体育锻炼的工作.     

Incentives for School Diversification

ABSTRACT

Reforms using market-style mechanisms of parental choice and competition between schools are intended to leverage change by compelling schools to diversify options and increase effectiveness. Yet, some research challenges those assumptions, suggesting that schools in competitive climates are more likely to focus on image management to attract a more desirable student intake than to engage in substantive innovations to improve student outcomes. This analysis examines school responses to competition in two local education markets representing a mix of public (including charter) and private school types. School promotional signals to consumers are studied in order to understand school perceptions and responses to underlying competitive incentive structures-incentives that reformers intended to encourage programmatic improvement and diversification of options along a horizontal axis of diverse consumer preferences. A review of marketing materials demonstrates that many schools are instead adopting marketing strategies designed to attract “better” students-often from schools considered to be successful, rather than from the failing schools reformers had targeted. These patterns of vertical differentiation suggest that schools may be acting in ways that reflect contradictory incentives shaping how schools engage the marketplace.     

Relationship Between Educational Resources and School Achievement: A Mixed Method Intra-District Analysis

This study examines the relationship between educational resources (fiscal, personnel and facilities) and school achievement within a large urban/suburban elementary school district. A sequential mixed methods approach reveals inequitable resource allocation trends and patterns between schools within a school district by producing different student outcomes. The educational resources positively correlated to higher school achievement are: higher teacher salaries, newer schools, more multi-purpose space per pupil and less portable classrooms. Without question, White students receive more of these resources than Latino students, low-income students and English Language learners. This study also conducts a multiple comparative case study analysis comparing between Title I and non-Title I schools, within Title I schools and within non-Title I schools. The study contains policy and practice implications to improve opportunity and school achievement in urban/suburban school districts.     

会计年度和教学年度的账务衔接处理方法

我国事业单位会计准则规定，会计年度为每年1月1日至12月31日。而学校的教学年度一般为每年9月1日至下一年的8月31日。在高校教育成本的核算管理中，往往需要了解和提供教学年度的财务收支情况，这样就产生了会计年度和教学年度账务处理不衔接的问题。通过“待转收入”和“待转支出”两个过渡性科目的会计处理，可以较好地解决账务衔接的问题。     

消费社会意识形态的运作机制分析

随着上世纪西方发达国家进入消费主导的时代,消费不再简单地只是经济学和社会学意义上的需要———满足的活动而构成消费社会的意识形态。以工具理性的成就和物质的丰裕为表象,借助大众传媒与消费大众心理的里应外合,大众消费被成功地规划和组织并被纳入社会生产体系,同时有力地证明了社会的合法性。对于消费意识形态应该有如下的认识,即它是一定社会历史的产物,它是社会控制形式变迁的结果,它也是消费文化的现代表达,同时它也促生了新的人的自我异化。     

师范院校德育柔性化管理的效能调查

对388名在校师范生的问卷调查表明：师范生对德育柔性化管理，对师范学校教师形象、德育活动和德育环境普遍持认同态度。调查建议，师范院校通过加强师生团队训练、校园网络建设以及德育实践活动提高德育柔性化管理的实效性。     

中学生暑期体育活动状况调研

对郴州市中学生暑期体育活动的现状进行调查、研究,结果表明:暑期体育活动深受中学生的喜欢;他们的体育活动时间主要安排在下午,且每次的活动时间在1h左右;选择的活动项目主要以游泳、篮球、健美操和骑自行车为主;"花钱买健康"的消费理念已在中学生中初步形成;学习负担重、没时间、无人组织和指导、经济限制和家长不支持是影响他们暑期体育活动的主要因素.     

财政扩张机制下的消费约束研究

在今后一个时期内能有效带动中国经济发展的只能是消费需求,提升消费需求水平必须改变我国的现有财政政策,从控制财政收入增长速度到改变收入结构与支出结构,为有效提升消费水平提供支撑。     

Municipal and private sector response to decentralization and school choice

A large number of developing nations are in the process of decentralizing basic education, with the aim of diversifying revenue sources and introducing greater accountability and efficiency. This is especially true in Latin America, where Chile introduced the first significant reform in 1981. This reform kept most of the responsibility for educational finance with the Ministry of Education but transferred the responsibility for delivering services to municipalities and non-profit, private schools. In response to this reform, municipalities increased their finance of public schools, and the supply of subsidized private education increased dramatically. By 1990, enrollment in subsidized private schools represented about one-third of total primary-secondary school enrollments. This paper examines the effects of the reform. Municipal finance, which is closely tied to municipal fiscal capacity, has created inequities in school expenditures even though it represents only 10% of total revenues. Variations in the private school market share across municipalities are principally explained by the ease of market entry, family socioeconomic status, and the relative performance of public and private schools; this model does not offer a satisfactory explanation of the growth in private school enrollments in Chile over time. The effect of the reform on cost-effectiveness is ambiguous. Ministry of Education non-teacher employment declined by over half, while cognitive tests also declined. There is some evidence that the growth in private school enrollments may have improved overall efficiency since private schools are found to be slightly more cost-effective than public schools.     

School Library Media Specialist-Teacher Collaboration: Characteristics, Challenges, Opportunities

The most successful school library media specialists are those who collaborate with teachers as full partners in the instructional process. Without assertive action by the school library media specialist, however, school administrators and teachers are likely to be more aware of the media specialist’s administrative role than the roles of teacher, instructional partner, and information specialist. Reductions to library media staff and finding common planning time are examples of serious challenges, but these are not insurmountable. In the context of well-planned instructional projects, collaboration with teachers is a primary way that school library media professionals can demonstrate that their work is a vital part of the academic life of their schools, and a positive factor in improving student achievement.     

Are Students Becoming Consumerist Learners?

This article explores how consumerism is impacting education, with a special focus on the ‘student as consumer’ model. I begin by exploring the distinctive features of consumerism and school commercialism. The tension between consumer and citizen leads into a discussion of the distinction between education as/for a public good versus as/for private gain, leading to a discussion of the notion of ‘Me, Inc.’ as an instrumental and privatized conception of education as self-branding that redirects peoples’ attention from environmental issues to personal gain and consumption. Explanation of this phenomenon is provided through a discussion of economistic approaches to education, such as the creation of human capital and the commodification of knowledge, which minimizes the importance of environmental sustainability education (ESE). The political challenges that consumerism presents in confronting ESE are such that attention is directed away from the urgency of political change and civic engagement and instead towards consumer satisfaction. I explore how the promotion of critical thinking is compromised as a result. I conclude by suggesting that consumerism undermines how education involves risk in the sense that we don't always know what we're getting into or how we will be impacted, as consumerism promotes the assumption that education should be easy and palatable and not involve suffering or adversity.     

Modern Languages in the School Curriculum: a philosophical view

This article is based on an analysis of two types of argument, called utilitarian and educational respectively, which are commonly used to justify the teaching of modern/foreign languages in schools. Serious flaws are identified in the utilitarian arguments often employed to defend the teaching of modern languages and different educational arguments which might be offered as justification for their inclusion in the school curriculum are distinguished and appraised. The paper concludes with a consideration of the implications of the foregoing analysis for the place of modern languages in the school curriculum.     

Supplying Choice: An Analysis of School Participation Decisions in Voucher Programs in Washington,DC, Indiana,and Louisiana

Since school voucher funds are public, policymakers fiercely debate how those funds should be spent. A goal of many decision-makers is to ensure that every private school option is “high-quality” through program accountability regulations. Private schools, however, decide whether to participate in a private school choice program and likely factor the amount of state regulations into that decision. This paper estimates the program participation decisions of the private schools in D.C., Indiana, and Louisiana. We specifically examine the impacts of voucher regulations on the supply-side of voucher programs. We employ a linear probability model to examine how school quality, as measured by revenue, tuition, enrollment, and Great School Review scores, is associated with program participation for schools. Results indicate that higher tuition-levels and larger cohort enrollments, conditions normally associated with high quality schools, identify schools that are less likely to participate in voucher programs. We also find a consistent negative relationship between Great Schools Review score and the school participation decision in all three locations; however, these coefficients are not statistically significant. State fixed effects reveal that private schools in D.C. and Louisiana, the two states that have higher regulatory burdens, are less likely to participate in voucher programs.     

Left Behind: District Secession and the Re-segregation of American Schools

ABSTRACT

Sixty-five years after the Brown v. Board decision, American schools are re-segregated and re-segregating. The mechanisms of this re-segregation are legal action, voluntary moves towards unitary status, unintended consequences of integration-oriented strategies, and an increasing trend towards the fracturing, or splintering of school districts. Both economic and political theory would indicate that splintering districts would work to pull racial and economic advantage out of the remaining district and into their own. To test this theory, we created a dataset that captures the fiscal and demographic status of U.S. school districts between 2000 and 2014 and analyzed the effect of district separation on the remaining districts in terms of student body composition, overall integration and local, state, and federal resources. Our findings indicate that separating districts are less diverse than the districts left behind. We further find that separating districts gain resources from local revenue and that remaining districts gain federal revenue in insufficient amounts to account for the loss of local funds. We find that these relative disadvantages for left behind districts and relative advantages for seceding districts persist when compared to the general population of school districts.     

汕头市东厦中学中学生税收宣教社会实践课程体系开发与实施

汕头市东厦中学中学生税收宣教社会实践课程体系是东厦中学结合承担广东省税收宣传教育基地任务而组织开发实施的校本课程,本文主要阐述了税收宣传教育的背景与意义、开发研究与实践过程、课程开发取得的成果、实践活动的效果等方面,对学校教育联结社会教育、公民教育进行了有益的探索。     

Bang for the Buck: Autonomy and Charter School Efficiency in Milwaukee

Charter schools are a relatively new phenomenon in American education. Since the first charter school opened in Minnesota in 1991, they have expanded to 42 states and represent 6.2% of all public schools in the country.¹ This growth has been attributed to a number of factors, chief among them evidence that charter schools can improve performance (Lamdin and Mintrom, 1997). While there is a substantial evidence for relative performance benefits of charter schooling (e.g. CREDO, 2015) far less research been conducted on the efficiency of charter schools relative to traditional public schools. What research there is has produced both positive (e.g. Wolf et. al., 2014) and negative results (e.g. Carpenter and Noller, 2010). What can account for the disparity in these findings? In this paper, I make the case that differences in charter efficiency may be accounted for by differences in their level of autonomy from the school district. I base this argument on economic theories that the devolution of power to the lowest level possible tends to produce gains in efficiency (Johnson, 1991; Duncombe and Yinger, 1997). Those that are “on the ground” are thought to be more effective at monitoring expenditures, and allocations of resources have to pass through less ‘red tape (Hess 2006).’ In addition, more autonomous charter schools better fit the original purpose of charter schools in devolving power from centralized authorities (Budde, 1996). In order to test this theory, I take advantage of a unique situation that exists in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in which three types of charter schools with varying levels of autonomy operate simultaneously. Using school type as a proxy for autonomy, I find that more independent charter schools are more efficient than traditional public schools and charter schools with less autonomy.     

Good School/Bad School: paradox and fabrication

This paper, drawn from an ESRC‐funded research project, deploys data from one secondary school to raise some general issues about the development of disciplinary technologies of surveillance and uses of performativity in education. It is argued that the use of Total Quality Management, School Development Planning and Ofsted (The Office for Standards in Education) Inspections, individually and collectively produce an intensification of teachers’ work, submit teachers more directly to the ‘gaze’ of policy, and encourage schools and teachers to ‘fabricate’ themselves for the purposes of evaluation and comparison. The paper is premised on the argument that schools cannot be represented adequately within research (or evaluation) by simple stories or single essentialising tags; ‘good/bad’, ‘successful/failing’ ‐‐ they are inherently paradoxical institutions.