Chapters: The Commission and educational equity; the premises underlying this series of reports; the Commission's recommendations; the reality of the California of today, and specific challenges with respect to education; the Commission's vision of the California of tomorrow, and how it can be realized; the role of education in creating this vision; schools as a resource in realizing the vision; enrolling a student body: the changing college admissions process in the 1990s; the collegiate experience; and the Commission's recommendation on educational equity. Charts and tables.
This is Volume 80, Issue 3 2005 of the Peabody Journal of Education and this special issue provides a collection of works on the topic of making school resources more effective in the U.S. The included articles look at educational finance, the Education Professions Act guidelines for more motivated teachers and leaders, licencing in public schools, a study on how teaching conditions impact teacher turnover in California, student achievement in relation to school facilities in Wyoming, and the value of econometric cost analysis in Texas. The final article includes the case of Williams vs the state of California, where in August 2000, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a class-action lawsuit on behalf of school children against the state of California. The suit, Williams v. State of California, alleged that the state failed to exercise its constitutional obligation to provide equal access to education for all students in the state by allowing deficient facilities, uncredentialed teachers, and inadequate or insufficient instructional materials.
Scholarly analysis in the sociology of education has burgeoned in recent decades. Frontiers in Sociology of Education aims to provide a roadmap for sociologists and other social scientists as they set bold new directions for future research on schools. In Part 1 of this forward-looking volume, the authors present cutting-edge research to set new guidelines for the sociological analysis of schools. In Part 2, notable social scientists, historians, administrators and educators provide a wide-ranging array of perspectives on contemporary education to insure that scholars make creative and broadly informed contributions to the sociological analysis of schools. The contributors to this volume examine events currently influencing education including: globalization, expansion of educational access, the changing significance of religion, new family structures, and curriculum reform. Frontiers in Sociology of Education offers an innovative collection of research and ideas aimed at inspiring new analyses of schools better linked to changing societal conditions.
Governor Jerry Brown's January 2011 budget proposal suggests shifting responsibility and funding for many state programs from the state to the local level. Under this "realignment" of government authority, local governments--usually counties--would be given responsibility for providing the services in realigned programs, and the state would provide local governments with a source of funding for the new responsibilities. In addition, local governments would be granted the authority to reshape realigned programs to better accommodate local conditions and priorities. Although k-12 education is not included in the governor's realignment proposal, similar themes apply to the current discussions and legislation pertaining to California's school finance system. This report examines California's school finance system through the lens of realignment, offering a framework for thinking about how k-12 realignment might work and the difficulties it might face. Certainly there are arguments on both sides of the equation. Proponents of greater local control argue that local school authorities have a better knowledge than state officials of the unique needs in their districts and that greater local control would reduce the administrative burden on schools and enable them to redirect their resources toward improving student outcomes. Those in favor of maintaining state control argue that central control allows the state to ensure its priorities are met across individual districts and that students in all districts, regardless of their size or location, are provided with similar educational opportunities. This study examines the trade-offs of each approach, concluding that thoughtful revisions in the state's categorical funding system would offer a good first step in moving toward a more productive, efficient, and transparent school finance system. (Contains 2 figures and 4 footnotes.) [Additional funding for this report was provided by the Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Fund.].
