Alex Molnar

Evaluating the SAGE Program: A Pilot Program in Targeted Pupil-Teacher Reduction in Wisconsin

Wisconsins Student Achievement Guarantee in Education (SAGE) program was designed as a 5-year K–3 pilot project that began in the 1996–97 school year. The program requires that participating schools implement 4 interventions including reducing the pupil-teacher ratio within classrooms to 15 students per teacher. The SAGE evaluation uses a quasi-experimental, comparative change design utilizing descriptive statistics, linear regression, and hierarchical linear modeling. In addition, qualitative analyses of life in SAGE schools and classrooms are conducted. Results of the 1996–97 and 1997–98 first grade data reveal findings consistent with the Tennessee STAR class size experiment. Also, individualization emerged as a key characteristic of instruction in SAGE classrooms.

The commercial transformation of public education

This essay reviews the history of school commercialization in the USA and the forms that it has taken over time, with particular attention paid to research measuring the scope and variety of commercialization trends in US public schools. The implications of commercialization activities such as those that promote the consumption of nutritionally deficient foods and beverages are explored. The argument is made that the values inherent in the consumerist ideology used to support school privatization conflict with the democratic values on which public education has been historically based. Edison Schools is discussed as a model of the for‐profit management of public schools and emerging forms of school commercialization are considered. Finally, the role of free trade agreements in promoting school commercialism and privatization is described.

Global Issues in Curriculum Development

Marshall McLuhan (1989) coined the term global village to characterize a world bound ever more tightly together by communications technology. Although global village is an evocative metaphor, clarifying what it means to be part of a global society raises difficult questions about our vision of America, the world, and America in the world not settled by a turn of phrase. The idea of a global society also invites rethinking our understanding of human nature and what it can become. To a certain extent, the global society one sees reflects where one stands. For example, business executives are concerned about what globalization means for their companies, while educators struggle to determine the values that should inform what children are taught about the emerging global society.

Contemporary Curriculum Discourse: Too Much Ado about Too Much Nothing.

Curriculum discourse. Whatever else might be said, most people would agree that there has been a lot of it. In 1986 Schubert claimed that more than 1,100 curriculum books had been written in this century (Schubert, 1986). The volume of words is probably explained in large measure by the fact that the curriculum field has no generally agreed-upon boundary markers. Different ways of framing curriculum questions and diverse answers compete for legitimacy without generally agreed-upon criteria for judging among them. Theoretical arguments have continued in a variety of historical guises alongside of numerous proposals for changing the day-to-day curriculum practices of schools. Fundamental disagreements about whether or not curriculum theorizing should be relevant to schools and schooling and whether or not educational reform is possible without social reconstruction have never been resolved.

A Systemic Perspective of Solving Problems in the School.

Administrators can solve some of the chronic, interpersonal problems they face daily by using concepts from the systems theory and techniques developed by systemic family therapists.