Examines the ideological differences between the education policies of the two main political parties in the UK and discusses the emergence of these differences within the context of the 1988 Education Reform Act. It also looks at the world-wide influence of the "New Right" politics on education.

Based on interviews with key actors in the policy-making process, this book maps the changes in education policy and policy making in the Thatcherite decade. The focus of the book is the 1988 Education Reform Act, its origins, purposes and effects, and it looks behind the scenes at the priorities of the politicians, civil servants and government advisers who were influential in making changes. Using direct quotations from senior civil servants and former secretaries of state it provides a fascinating insight into the way in which policy is made. The book focuses on real-life political conflicts, examining the way in which education policy was related to the ideal of society projected by Thatcherism. It looks in detail at the New Right government advisers and think tanks; the industrial lobby, addressing issues such as the National Curriculum, national testing and City Technical Colleges. The author sets these important issues within a clear theoretical framework which illuminates the whole process of policy making.

During the 1980s, widespread dissatisfaction with America's schools gave rise to a powerful movement for educational change, and the nation's political institutions responded with aggressive reforms. Chubb and Moe argue that these reforms are destined to fail because they do not get to the root of the problem. The fundamental causes of poor academic performance, they claim, are not to be found in the schools, but rather in the institutions of direct democratic control by which the schools have traditionally been governed. Reformers fail to solve the problem-when the institutions ARE the problem. The authors recommend a new system of public education, built around parent-student choice and school competition, that would promote school autonomy—thus providing a firm foundation for genuine school improvement and superior student achievement.

Since Tenured Radicals first appeared in 1990, it has achieved the status of a minor classic. Trenchant and witty, it lays bare the sham of what now passes for serious teaching and research in the humanities at American universities Mr. Kimball names his enemies precisely....This book will breed fistfights.--Roger Rosenblatt, New York Times Book Review. All persons serious about education should see it.--Allan Bloom, author of The Closing of the American Mind

James Anderson critically reinterprets the history of southern black education from Reconstruction to the Great Depression. By placing black schooling within a political, cultural, and economic context, he offers fresh insights into black commitment to education, the peculiar significance of Tuskegee Institute, and the conflicting goals of various philanthropic groups, among other matters. Initially, ex-slaves attempted to create an educational system that would support and extend their emancipation, but their children were pushed into a system of industrial education that presupposed black political and economic subordination. This conception of education and social order--supported by northern industrial philanthropists, some black educators, and most southern school officials--conflicted with the aspirations of ex-slaves and their descendants, resulting at the turn of the century in a bitter national debate over the purposes of black education. Because blacks lacked economic and political power, white elites were able to control the structure and content of black elementary, secondary, normal, and college education during the first third of the twentieth century. Nonetheless, blacks persisted in their struggle to develop an educational system in accordance with their own needs and desires.

During the 1990s, the Republican party surged to majority status in the South after two decades of struggling unevenly to become established in the formerly one-party Democratic section of the country. In this comprehensive, up-to-date study, seasoned observers tell the fascinating story of the GOP’s remarkable advance at the regional level and in each of the eleven states of the former Confederacy, effectively capturing the current partisan dynamics at work throughout Dixie. In Southern Politics in the 1990s eleven teams of political scientists and journalists—all of them long-time observers of the political scene in their own states—offer individual chapters that closely examine partisan and electoral developments in each southern state. Alexander P. Lamis frames the state discussions with introductory and concluding chapters that highlight the evolution of the two-party South and the political transformation the region as a whole underwent during the decade of the 1990s. Together, the authors show that the amazing Republican spurt was fueled by many factors, including the ongoing entrenchment of the partisan competition begun three decades earlier; the national Republican sweep of 1994 that affected all regions of the country equally; and the successful efforts of Republicans to paint the Democrats as hopelessly mired in a corrupt political system and themselves as untainted reformers who represent the future. However, as the separate state chapters illustrate, the pace of change differed from state to state. For example, South Carolina was an early Dixie leader in the GOP’s growth in the 1990s, but Arkansas caught the wave only in the middle of the decade. Offering in-depth political analysis on both the state and the regional level, Southern Politics in the 1990s reveals that the 1990s revolution in southern politics gave the country, for the first time since the 1850s, a truly national party system. The book will prove essential to anyone interested in southern politics at the dawn of the twenty-first century.

Some of the nation's wealthiest philanthropies, including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Walton Family Foundation, and the Broad Foundation have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in education reform. With vast wealth and a political agenda, these foundations have helped to reshape the reform landscape in urban education. In Follow the Money, Sarah Reckhow shows where and how foundation investment in education is occurring and presents in-depth analysis of the effects of these investments within the two largest urban districts in the United States: New York City and Los Angeles. In New York City, centralized political control and the use of private resources have enabled rapid implementation of reform proposals. Yet this potent combination of top-down authority and outside funding also poses serious questions about transparency, responsiveness, and democratic accountability in New York. Furthermore, the sustainability of reform policies is closely linked to the political fortunes of the current mayor and his chosen school leader. While the media has highlighted the efforts of drastic reformers and dominating leaders such as Joel Klein in New York City and Michelle Rhee in Washington, D.C., a slower, but possibly more transformative, set of reforms have been taking place in Los Angeles. These reforms were also funded and shaped by major foundations, but they work from the bottom up, through charter school operators managing networks of schools. This strategy has built grassroots political momentum and demand for reform in Los Angeles that is unmatched in New York City and other districts with mayoral control. Reckhow's study of Los Angeles's education system shows how democratically responsive urban school reform could occur-pairing foundation investment with broad grassroots involvement. Bringing a sharp analytical eye and a wealth of evidence to one of the most politicized issues of our day, Follow the Money will reshape our thinking about educational reform in America.

Youth and Identity Politics in South Africa shows how the youth identify variously as fans of jazz or hip-hop who espouse a none-racial national character, as athletes who feel a strong connection to traditional Zulu patriarchy, or in many other social and political subcultures.

Education policymaking is traditionally seen as a domestic political process. The job of deciding where students will be educated, what they will be taught, who will teach them, and how it will be paid for clearly rests with some mix of district, state, and national policymakers. This book seeks to show how global trends have produced similar changes to very different educational systems in the United States and Japan. Despite different historical development, social norms, and institutional structures, the U.S. and Japanese education systems have been restructured over the past dozen years, not just incrementally but in ways that have transformed traditional power arrangements. Based on 124 interviews, this book examines two restructuring episodes in U.S. education and two restructuring episodes in Japanese education. The four episodes reveal a similar politics of structural education reform that is driven by symbolic action and bureaucratic turf wars, which has ultimately hindered educational improvement in both countries.

The study unfolds the working of party politics in Jharkhand in the national background during the colonial and post-colonial period. This period witnessed manifold changes when the democratic system was partially introduced under the representative government and provincial autonomy. After Independence and the establishment of the Republic, the nature and working of the political parties underwent a sea change. The rise of regional political parties, their fragmentation and the emergence of new ones along with the demand for a seperate Jharkhand State have been discussed in detail. This book will be of great use to teachers, scholars, and students of history and political science, legislators, members of various parties, and all those interested in the study of regional political parties in India particularly in the Jharkhand State.