Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This paper explores dramatic new forms of police power operating in a Southern public school system by documenting the expanded uses of technology by police in a public school. Specifically, the tracking and utilization of student conduct data for police work by crime analysts in an urban law enforcement agency, reveal a disproportionate targeting of minority students and a de facto “defining deviancy downward” facilitated by police power and the outsourcing of school discipline by the school system to the police department. The civil rights and criminological consequences of these developments are explored.

Publication Type: Single Paper Format
Abstract: The development of Quality Indicators for innovative teacher preparation programs through Project KNOTtT is an example of a multi-state collaborative effort to create and sustain a network among universities, schools, state departments of education, corporations and businesses, and non-profit organizations that support the preparation of teachers in both school-university partnerships and school-based programs.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: In this paper I analyze if charter schools exacerbate or ameliorate existing patterns of segregation in public schools by comparing the racial composition of charter schools with the racial composition of the public schools located in the school districts that have sponsored charter schools in California, one of the most active chartering states. The analysis spans the first fourteen years of charter school reform in California (1993-2006). In the first part of the analysis I use exposure and isolation indexes to provide measures of the exposure of the average white student to black and Latino students and white isolation. The standardized forms of the exposure and isolation indexes (S and eta2, respectively) are used to facilitate comparisons across years and sectors. In the second part of the analysis, I examine the distribution of students in highly segregated schools. The results of the analysis are mixed and suggest that overall, charter schools are not ameliorating racial segregation in public education and may well be exacerbating existing patterns of school segregation.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Arguing that macro-social and structural factors like, patterns of educational governance, and subjects’ institutional status, influence the actual curriculum implemented by local schools, the present study investigates between-school variation in curricular implementation through a three-dimensional comparison: between two school levels (elementary – JHS), between three major Israeli public sectors (Jewish secular, Jewish religious, and Arab/Druze), and between school subjects of varying institutional status. We compare across- and within-sector and school level differences, in course offerings and subject emphasis (weekly time allocations) in all subject areas.
Opposite to our preliminary hypothesis, greater variation in curriculum implementation was found in elementary school level (compared to JHS), which might be explained by specific structural conditions and school governance policy in Israel. The two other hypotheses were mostly confirmed: greater between-school uniformity in the Arabic, the least autonomous sector, and greater uniformity in implementation of strongly institutionalized subjects,
However, the findings also suggest a much more intricate picture of between-levels, between-sector and between-subject curriculum structures, than had been initially hypothesized: Variation in subject-specific implementation “interact” with school sector, and school level.
Macro-social processes like decentralization increase tendencies towards “loose coupling” and school autonomy, and subsequently heighten the overall diversification of educational knowledge offered by local schools. Processes of educational globalization, which often lead to greater standardization in official curricular structures and the institutionalization of certain school subjects (e.g., mathematics and science), appear to have more complex effects at the local school level.

Publication Type: Proceeding