Purpose Of Public Education Research Articles

Universal mental health curricula in public schools: Integrating mental health into physical education

AbstractMental health problems are ubiquitous, yet public schooling lacks comprehensive mental health curricula. The purpose of public education, in part, is to prepare people to face life and contribute to society. In the same vein as physical education (PE), we argue that a universal mental health curriculum could benefit the entire population. Schools across the globe, including in the United States, are beginning to explore universal mental health curricula, which could yield benefits that reach beyond mental health and wellness, to improve physical health, reduce behavioral problems, and increase academic performance. But the road ahead is marked with considerable economic and political barriers. We argue for incorporating mental health into the PE curriculum to gain traction toward a more comprehensive mental health curriculum.

Policy Dialogue: The Meaning and Purpose of Public Education

AbstractPublic education, at least as it has been known for the past several generations in the US, is under threat. Conservative state legislatures from Arizona to Florida have enacted sweeping voucher legislation, channeling taxpayer dollars to private schools. At the same time, a vicious culture war has engulfed the public education system in controversy, creating new political opportunities for ideologues and opponents. In this context, the editorial team at HEQ felt it important to reflect on why we have public schools in the first place. What are they good for and what should be taught? Whom should they serve, and who should govern them?For this policy dialogue, we asked Carol Burris and Johann Neem to discuss the past, present, and future of open-enrollment, taxpayer-supported public schools. Carol Burris is the executive director of the Network for Public Education Foundation and the author of several books. Prior to that role, Dr. Burris was a classroom teacher and a high school principal, earning educator of the year and principal of the year awards. Johann Neem is a professor at Western Washington University and a historian of the early American republic. The author of several books, including Democracy’s Schools: The Rise of Public Education in America, Dr. Neem is also a member of HEQ’s editorial board.HEQ policy dialogues are, by design, intended to promote an informal, free exchange of ideas between scholars. At the end of the exchange, we offer a list of references for readers who wish to follow up on sources relevant to the discussion.

Problematising “World Class” public education policy in South Australia: Insights for education policy makers

Abstract This policy-interested South Australian public education case study problematises how the Chief Executive (CE) and members of the Education Department’s Senior Executive Group (SEG) understood system and school improvement from 2018 to 2022. We applied Carol Bacchi’s, “What’s the Problem Represented to be?”(WPR) policy analysis framework to unearth the policy assumptions underlying the Department’s overarching policy ensemble called “World Class,” initiated across South Australia’s public primary and secondary schools. WPR reveals heightened centralised technologies of command and control directed at teacher and leader work to achieve McKinsey defined World Class status by 2028. We find school improvement policy solutions were engineered through “managerially enforced complexity reduction” techniques within the paradigm of the Global Education Reform Movement (GERM). These techniques impacted policy prescriptions, performance management technologies, school improvement plans, curriculum materials for schools, and promoted NAPLAN as the ultimate measure of the good school, the good teacher, and the good principal. NAPLAN is the National Assessment Program—Literacy and Numeracy used in Australia and takes the form of an annual standardised assessment for students in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9. Most concerningly, we find the policy logics of World Class worked to incentivise inequality across public schools through diminishing the purposes of public education and the professionalism of educators. We conclude arguing for the democratisation of existing departmental structures within iterative inquiry-based approaches to policy formation and practice to better attend to public education purposes.

State management of education and training in Vietnam

The relevance of the research is due to the fact that nowadays, public administration is a rather important factor that affects any social system, in particular, the structure of education and upbringing. Since the development of the education system is directly related to the development of the education mechanism itself, it is necessary to take measures to reform the state management of education. The purpose of the study was to find out how the level of state management of the education system in Vietnam affects the future profession and success of students. To achieve the goals and objectives, the following methodological approaches were used: the analysis method, the theoretical approach, the systematic approach, the deduction method, the induction method, and others. The article reveals and analyses the concept of “state management of education and training”. Modern methods of modernization of public administration in the field of education and training in Vietnam are also defined. It was revealed how important the educational sector is for the formation of the state. The results of the survey were analysed, which showed what factors should be added to improve the education system. The peculiarities of the implementation of state administration in the activity of a modern general educational institution are considered. The main components of the state model of management of education and training in educational institutions are defined, the purpose of public education in modern Vietnam is highlighted, as well as the criteria on which the quality of the education system depends. With the help of methods of analytical and statistical analysis, the features of the state administration system in the field of education and training were studied. The need to modernize education and training management is substantiated. It has been proven that the quality of education is related to the effectiveness of management. The educational process is considered as an important characteristic of the state’s competitiveness. The obtained research results provide an opportunity to determine effective ways to improve the quality of education management.

Toward an ecological view of learning: Cultivating learners in a data-driven society

Although modern education is expected to solve social problems, it has brought about new problems. While theoretical critiques of education have not always been successful, with the transition to a data-driven society, education as a historical product is actually losing its efficacy. However, this does not mean that acquisition of knowledge and skills is becoming unnecessary. Prompted by the need to change the purpose of public education, we are forced to rethink the nature of education boldly. Competency-based education, as advocated by the OECD, appears to have led to such rethinking; however, it is widely accepted as a revised version of modern education. If this trend continues, the contradiction between education and society will deepen further. To overcome this contradiction, we must change our view of education. With education and learning having an asymmetrical relationship to begin with, the clue to changing our view of education lies in re-examining our view of learning. A more comprehensive way of learning that has accompanied human history is attracting the attention of various disciplines. I present a redefined framework for learning that is inherent to humans, which I call the ecological view of learning, and explore an alternative to modern education, learning from the Japanese thought on ‘Manabi (learning).’

The Cloquet Forest Experiment Station in 1910

In 1909, the University of Minnesota secured 2,640 acres of tribal forest lands on the Fond du Lac Reservation in northeast Minnesota for a school forest.1 The station’s purpose was “to demonstrate proper methods of forest management and reforestation in the Lake States; and to advance the science of forestry as a whole” (Zon 1912, p. 1; Figure 1). The station was intentionally “situated…in the heart of a cut-over and burned-over area” to be an “ideal location” for the long-term demonstration of silvicultural practices (University of Minnesota 1914, p. 61). University staff primarily reserved red and white pine seed trees along existing forest roads for the purpose of public education, as well as for their scenic value. Among these reserves was “a beautiful grove of large red pine” where future buildings would be “carefully planned to harmonize with the environment” (Tierney 1910;...

Rhetoric and the purposes of public education: building discourse for shared responsibility

ABSTRACT In this study, we employ discourse analysis of US gubernatorial political advertisements to analyze the discursive struggles over the purposes of public schools. The advertisements are analyzed to demonstrate how rhetoric works to shape consent for dominant, human capital views regarding schooling's purposes, as well as to communicate alternative articulations of schooling's purposes which can disrupt that consent. In the latter exploration, we draw upon the approach of public persuasion, where the public is persuaded to deem something other than dominant economic values as relevant for making education decisions. We analyze alternative contextual cues that can shift citizens’ impressions, leading them to weigh conflicting values toward schools differently. We offer narratives that change the meaning citizens make of schools with the aim of building public support for public schools.

ESCOLA, PARA QUE TE QUERO!?


 
 
 
 Este artigo objetiva problematizar distensões acerca dos sentidos e finalidades da educação pública a partir do debate sobre as interações entre os paradigmas da igualdade e da diversidade. Apresenta bases e implicações da operacionalização desses paradigmas no campo educacional, destacando contradições e disputas na conformação dos currículos que decorrem dessa interação. Como estratégia de diálogo entre estes paradigmas, sugere-se o debate em torno da teoria dos códigos e da ideia de manejo de contextos de Basil Bernstein, como dispositivos intelectuais para a compreensão das diferentes demandas e tensões em torno da educação pública. Busca-se também refletir sobre como os discursos disciplinares especializados se recontextualizam e se relacionam com diferentes e desiguais contextos de realização das aprendizagens. Por fim, destaca-se o papel das referidas proposições de Bernstein na promoção de uma escola mais justa, ou seja, comprometida com o reconhecimento e valorização das diferenças e com o acesso mais igualitário às diversas formas de saberes que compõem os currículos escolares.
 
 
 
 
 Palavras-chave
 Educação pública, Currículos, Manejo de contextos, Escola justa
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Educational purposes economicus: Globalization and the Reshaping of Educational Purpose in Three Canadian Provinces

I explore the ways in which the discourse of globalization has shaped purposes of public education into what I will call purposes economicus - that is, the reshaping of educational purpose by the perceived demands of a competitive global economy. I argue that the effects of globalization on existing constructions of economic and social privilege have had a pernicious effect on broader possibilities for public schooling in order to enhance private privilege. However, purposes of public education are highly contested and their capture by the perceived inevitability of what have emerged as highly congruent educational policies across Anglo-American capitalist democracies is always incomplete and can, therefore, be resisted.

Telling new stories about school

Societal stories about school do not just reflect our current views and values, they also shape our political preferences and the realities that result from them. In recent decades, stories of the traditional common school and its more collectivist, shared culture have given way to newer stories oriented around competition and choice. Sarah Stitzlein and Kathleen Knight Abowitz suggest that telling new stories that foreground the public or shared purposes of public education may lead people to choose candidates and back policies that better serve our children and our communities.

Culture jamming the ‘corporate assault’ on schools and children

In contemporary times, organisations across all sectors of society have been encouraged to collaborate and be ‘part of the solution’ to childhood obesity. This has led to a proliferation of anti-obesity/healthy lifestyles programmes that are funded, devised and implemented by private sector players (e.g. McDonald’s, Nestlé) in schools across the globe. This corporate-friendly version of education attempts to erode the democratic purposes of public education, and at the same time, shape children as consumers. Drawing on the Foucauldian notion of the governmental assemblage, I argue that culture jamming techniques, such as pranking and détournement, may act as tactics within a broader critical pedagogy of consumption that both challenges and counter-exploits this new ‘brand’ of education and corporation. Culture jamming provides an opportunity to develop students and teachers as counter-political agents: those that contest anti-politics, create new truths, unmask corporate interests and ‘unsettle’ the corporatised education assemblage.

Desire for democracy: Perspectives of parents impacted by 2013 Chicago school closings

In this article, we discuss the historical shifts in the purposes of public education and examine how neoliberal education policies, like Chicago’s school closings, attempt to limit the purpose of public education to be in service to and at the whim of the market. We juxtapose this dominant neoliberal narrative of public education with the voices of the parents from closed schools, whose deep involvement with and beliefs about public schools counter neoliberalism’s shallow concept of the public purpose of public education. Drawing upon a 2014 qualitative study of parents and caregivers who were impacted by school closures and actions, as well as publically available data, we find that parents believe school closings cause great harm to students, families and communities, aim to reduce citizens to consumers in an educational marketplace, and seek to further undermine democracy in education toward a “thin democracy” (Gandin & Apple, 2002) of marketized education. However, we argue that there is an alternative to the neoliberal narrative reflected both in the ongoing historical struggle about the purposes of schooling and in the wisdom, experiences, and desires of parents most directly impacted by neoliberal education policies.

Brown v. Board and the Transformation of American Culture: Education and the South in the Age of Desegregation by Ben Keppel

Reviewed by: Brown v. Board and the Transformation of American Culture: Education and the South in the Age of Desegregation by Ben Keppel Dara R. Walker Brown v. Board and the Transformation of American Culture: Education and the South in the Age of Desegregation. By Ben Keppel. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 2016. vii + 225 pp. Paper $45. In historical memory and scholarship, Brown vs. Board of Education looms large as one of the central legal challenges to political and social inequality in the United States. Reflecting on this vast literature in 2004, just fifty years after the landmark case, Waldo E. Martin issued a call to his fellow historians to consider the social and culture history of the monumental campaign.* In many ways, Ben Keppel’s Brown v. Board and the Transformation of American Culture: Education and the South in the Age of Desegregation is a response to this charge. In a history of the years following the US Supreme Court’s decision, or what the author calls the Age of Brown, Keppel examines how Americans responded to cultural changes that were products of calls for desegregation. At the center of this history are three “cultural first responders”: Harvard-trained psychiatrist Robert Coles, comedian Bill Cosby, and television producer Joan Ganz Cooney. In tandem, these individuals used the tools of their trades to help answer one [End Page 285] essential question: “what does the phrase ‘public education’ require of the rest of us?” (13) The first chapter characterizes the Age of Brown as a historical reenactment of the Reconstruction era. Although the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments represented an opening for African Americans to lay claim to citizenship after emancipation, the American polity had failed to fully embrace its new citizens. It would take the work of abolitionist Fredrick Douglass and others to transform a culture that had relied on racial inequality for centuries. Keppel argues that by the 1950s, public education had become a site of this struggle, or a twentieth-century Civil War. The second chapter examines the trajectory of public schooling in the United States during the 1960s, when Americans from all stripes wrestled with the cultural transformations Brown imbued in American schooling. Using Septima Clark and Marcus Foster as key examples, Keppel suggests that the pedagogical practices and school-centered approaches of Clark and Foster illustrate the cultural impact of Brown. These “new abolitionists,” which included the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) activists and their work with Freedom Schools, reshaped meanings of public education. Clark approached learning as a reciprocal process at the Highlander Folk School, while Foster worked with students and parents to lobby Sacramento legislators for increased school funding. In chapters 3, 4, and 5, Keppel takes the reader on a journey outside of the schools and into the world of social scientists and popular cultural figures. Each of these “cultural first responders” used their platform to push the country to reconsider the purpose of public education at a moment when federal programs like the War on Poverty pushed for greater citizen participation. Robert Coles, the author of the Children of Crisis series, used his fieldwork in Mississippi to support efforts to bring the Head Start Project to the state. Cosby, who saw himself as a teacher, created the Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids cartoon to raise racial awareness and to provide positive images for black children during the 1970s, when representations of African Americans were largely limited to news coverage of social unrest and protest. Cosby sought to provide an alternative to these depictions and the children’s shows that portrayed white children’s lives as normative. And of course, he brought the same agenda to his primetime show, the Cosby Show in 1984. Like Cosby, Joan Ganz Cooney, the creator of the Children’s Television Workshop and a producer for the popular children’s show Sesame Street, used her platform to transform the meaning of public education. Established in 1970 and set in New York City, the show represented a form of educational television that tried to imagine the world as it could be. It allowed American children the opportunity to integrate virtually without [End Page 286...

DEBATING EDUCATION AND POLITICAL REFORM: THE FREINET MOVEMENT AND DEMOCRATISATION IN SPAIN (1975-1982)

Abstract In the mid-1960s, the Freinet movement took on new life - first with the name Association for Correspondence and the School Printing Press - Acies -, and later as the Popular School Cooperative Movement - MCEP. In a short space of time, the organisation grew to contain over a hundred members and supporters, who, along with the process of the Transition to democracy, laid the foundations for many of Acies/MCEP's projects - both pedagogical and political projects. Of greatest importance amongst these were conferences, teacher-training seminars and the bulletin Colaboración (1976-1985), which was the organ of expression and communication for Spanish teachers following Freinet's principles. During the period of political transition to democracy, Acies/MCEP was one of the most active and dynamic Educational Renewal Movements in Spain. The present article explores the contributions of the Freinet movement to the democratisation of education in Spain - in particular, the political-pedagogical discussion on the principles and purposes of public education, how to understand it, the problems posed by the existence of privately-subsidised education, and the role of the school as a tool for community development and an arena for civic participation. For these reasons, as a documentary source to be explored in depth, the bulletin Colaboración has been chosen; it offers an example of the pedagogical press for teachers in the Spain of 1970s and 1980s, as it helped shape the educational mindset in place during this period and in the following years.

“We Need to Grab Power Where We Can”: Teacher Activists’ Responses to Policies of Privatization and the Assault on Teachers in Chicago

In the midst of neoliberal governing mentalities, policies of privatizing public education in the U.S., and corporate reform, to what extent do the voice, emotion, body and resistance of a teacher matter? This article considers the experiences of teachers as they develop a critical consciousness and attempt to resist the global and local forces that seek to (de)professionalize them in particular ways that omit their voice from educational matters. Instead of accepting that teacher bodies have become regulated through disciplinary acts such as policies of privatization, corporate reform models or mechanisms of standardization in education such as value-added analysis as part of teacher evaluations across the U.S., this article explores the ways in which teachers in the local context of Chicago “talk back” to policy reform. Utilizing Giroux’s (1988) conceptual frame of “critical consciousness” coupled with teacher as “radical organic intellectual” and additional frameworks around neoliberal governmentality in educational settings to situate the study (Foucault, 1994; Rose, 1996, 1999; Rose & Miller, 1992), the purpose of this article is to explore teacher activists’ responses to teacher assault, policies of privatization and school closings in Chicago during the 2012-2013 school year. Drawing on ethnographic field notes from participant observations as teachers protested, organized, and agitated local educational policies and interviews with three teachers, this article considers the purpose of public education from teacher perspectives as well as their reasons and motivation for speaking against policies of neoliberal governmentality and policies of privatization (Lipman, 2011). Locating teacher consciousness and reflexivity enables us to see the lived experiences of teachers in Chicago and to write against (othering of teachers, and) the normative discourses around teacher deficits and the profession of teaching’s positioning in policy as inferior. Using the narratives of three particular teachers, this study provides insight into the ways in which teachers make sense of policy, and the ways in which they disrupt the process of corporate, neoliberal ideology.

How Do New Critical Pedagogies Develop? Educational Innovation, Social Change, and Landless Workers in Brazil

Background Over the past 30 years, the Brazilian Landless Workers’ Movement (MST), one of the largest social movements in Latin America, has developed a series of pedagogical practices for public schools that support the movement's struggle for agrarian reform in the Brazilian countryside. The MST's educational initiatives can be viewed in terms of their place in the debate about how grassroots movements develop alternatives to dominant educational practices. Purpose This article examines the diverse pedagogies and educational theories that MST activists have drawn on, while also assessing the political implications of this participation in the public schools. Setting Research took place in Brazil, in several dozen public schools located in MST communities. Population Research participants included MST activists, students attending schools in MST communities, teachers working in these schools, administrators, and public officials. More than 150 people were interviewed. Research Design This research is an ethnographic, qualitative case study, examining the MST's educational initiatives in four different regions of Brazil. Field research took place over 15 months, between October 2010 and December 2011. Research methods included semi-structured interviews, classroom observation, participation observation, analysis of primary documents, and focus groups with teachers and students. Findings Although the MST initially invested only in informal, popular education, by the late 1980s activists began to realize that transforming public schools was necessary for the realization of the movement's social and political goals. By drawing on their previous experiences with popular education, as well as the theories of several outside intellectuals, activists developed educational utopias that allowed them to solidify their educational proposals in practice. Conclusions This article provides insights into the process of grassroots educational innovation, illustrating that communities draw on a diverse set of educational theories that resonate with local practices and beliefs to develop alternative proposals for their schools. The article also suggests that certain questions arise about the purpose of public education when social movements with particular visions of societal transformation demand participation in the public school sphere. The article argues that this social movement participation is appropriate if activists can mobilize parents, students, teachers, and other community members to implement this vision through a collective process of participatory governance.

From the Editorial Board Marketing the Future: Rebranding Public Education

From the Editorial Board Marketing the Future:Rebranding Public Education Torrie K. Edwards It is important to discuss the role of higher education and university structures in a journal that focuses on secondary education and research policy because post-secondary changes inevitably shape P-12 education policy. With political rhetoric around the policies for higher education becoming increasingly conservative across many states (in particular, those with notably progressive institutions), it is clear that the political right will gravely impact P-20 public education in two ways: first, by redefining the purpose of schools, thus changing coursework, university and P-12 school structures, standards, teacher preparation, and teacher compensation; and second, by privatizing schools, which—regardless of whether this is intended or not—will exacerbate existing race-based and class-based institutional inequities. Pervasive in the current rhetoric of public higher education is an emphasis on the job market and employability, as well as the repeated use of business language and terminology in program and institutional evaluation. Though current rhetoric emphasizes this neoliberal approach to education, public education has not always been conceptualized only in this way. The purpose of public education has often been understood as a mechanism by which we create civically active and knowledgeable participants in a democratic society. This idea of democratic citizenship is reflected in university mission statements, demonstrating both university and external community members’ moral and political understanding of the role of public higher education. A simple Google search of public universities’ mission statements elicits such examples of university purpose as “community engagement” (University of South Carolina, 2010), “new knowledge that can change how we all work and live” (University of Minnesota, 2014), and “the free and collegial exchange of ideas” (University of Virginia, 2014). These characteristics of higher education are similarly reflected in P-12 spaces. Historically, public education has been conceptualized as the means by which America can “survive as a democracy,” by “arm[ing] people with an intelligence capable of free and independent thought” that “helps people to build common ground across diverse experiences and ideas” (Darling-Hammond, 1996, p. 5). And, although the Common Core State Standards (2010) also emphasize competitiveness, that the standards identify educated citizenship and respect for the experiences of “widely divergent cultures” (p. 7) as important also echoes those university statements of purpose. Looking at these post-secondary missions and our current P-12 academic standards, it is clear that both parts of the public education community share the responsibility to promote excellence, academic quality, and a devotion to community. Despite these qualities of public education, in recent years, conservative political figures across the country have used their executive strength to encourage and supplement legislative policies that limit and change the purpose of public higher education. State leaders like Governors Scott Walker of Wisconsin and Rick Scott of Florida are attempting to institute efforts to limit and change public education by cutting public P-20 education funding and expanding voucher programs (Bosman, 2015; Kelderman, 2015; [End Page 1] Strauss, 2015). Often leaders who have slashed the public education budget and rearranged education systems have met resistance, and nowhere is the political tension around public education more apparent than in North Carolina, the home state of The High School Journal. In 2013, newly elected Governor Pat McCrory decried the intellectual elitism of North Carolina’s university system. Declaring his lack of support for public funding of liberal arts education in public universities, he argued that the system’s responsibility was to produce employable graduates who could fill the market’s needs; for instance students who wish to participate in liberal arts courses such as “gender studies” or “Swahili language” classes could, according to the Governor, “go to a private school” (Kingkade, 2015). McCrory’s statement, which elicited criticism from students, college professors, and even other conservatives (Kingkade, 2015), flies in the face of the University of North Carolina’s mission to maintain an “unwavering commitment to excellence as one of the world’s great research universities” and extend “knowledge-based services and other resources of the University to the citizens of North Carolina…to enhance the quality of life for all people in the State” (University of North...

Irrational Exuberance for Market-based Reform: How Federal Turnaround Policies Thwart Democratic Schooling

BackgroundIn 2009, the Obama Administration announced its intention to rapidly “turn around” 5,000 of the nation's lowest-performing schools. To do so, it relied on the School Improvement Grant (SIG) program to provide temporary funding for states and schools, and to mandate drastic, school-level reforms. Most of these reforms require massive administrative and teacher layoffs, especially under the “turnaround option.”In the public debate about the SIG program, reforms such as turnarounds have been described as new and innovative. In reality, the nation has significant experience with them, particularly over the past 40 years. Turnaround-style reforms are not only based on unwarranted claims; they ignore contrary research evidence about the potential of mass firings to improve organizational performance.PurposeThis paper considers the tensions with democratic education inherent in the federal SIG program's market-based school reforms. It examines the evolution of and intent behind the 2009 federal SIG program. From there, it considers the lessons of forty years of research on educational effectiveness and high-stakes accountability. It builds on this evidence, as well as the growing literature on communities’ engagement in reform, in its analysis of the school turnaround research and practice. The paper culminates in a set of recommendations that are intended to re-center the purposes of public education for low-income students, students of color, and local communities in developing more equitable, democratic school turnarounds.Research DesignThis article synthesizes forty years of research on school and district effectiveness, high-stakes accountability, and community engagement in school reform to evaluate the federal School Improvement Grant program's potential to cultivate democratic, equitable public schools. It also reviews the small, but rapidly growing literature on school turnarounds, paying particular attention to the ways in which this new field reproduces or departs from earlier literature that examined reform models that are analogous to the current SIG-funded school turnarounds. Conclusions: Based on the provisional lessons that are emerging from current SIG-inspired turnarounds, from research on earlier efforts to improve school and district effectiveness, and from pockets of promising community-based practices that are developing at local and national levels, we propose five steps that federal, state, and local policymakers can take toward fostering more equitable, democratic turnaround processes. First, increase current federal and state spending for public education, particularly as it is allocated for more democratic turnarounds. Second, focus turnaround policies on improving the quality of teaching and learning rather than on technical-structural changes. Third, engage a broad cross-section of schools’ communities—teachers, students, parents, and community organizations—in planning and implementing turnaround strategies that are tailored to each school and district context. Fourth, incorporate multiple indicators of effectiveness—apart from test scores—that reflect the range of purposes for schools. Fifth, support ongoing, systematic research, evaluation, and dissemination examining all aspects of turnaround processes in schools and districts.

Public education and targeted outreach to underserved women through the National Breast and Cervical Cancer Early Detection Program.

The National Breast and Cervical Cancer Early Detection Program (NBCCEDP) was established to provide low-income, uninsured, and underinsured women access to cancer screening and diagnostic services with the goal of increasing the early detection and prevention of breast and cervical cancer. Although this is a valuable resource for women who might not have the means to get screened otherwise, providing services at no cost, by itself, does not guarantee uptake of screening services. Public education and targeted outreach facilitate the critical link between public service programs and the communities they serve. The purpose of public education and outreach in the NBCCEDP is to increase the number of women who use breast and cervical cancer screening services by raising awareness, providing education, addressing barriers, and motivating women to complete screening exams and follow-up. Effective strategies focus on helping to remove structural, physical, interpersonal, financial, and cultural barriers; educate women about the importance of screening and inform women about the services available to them. This article provides an overview of the importance of public education and targeted outreach activities for cancer screening through community-based programs including examples from NBCCEDP grantees that highlight successes, challenges, and solutions, encountered when conducting these types of interventions.

Testing the Limits of Free Exercise and Establishment: Collective Religious Identity in South Carolina

The tenuous relationship between religion and public schooling illuminates the dangers presented to the democratic, pluralist state when collective religious identity trumps democratic and pluralist commitments and indeed violates the time-tested protections of the First Amendment. In this article, the authors provide a brief overview of the religion clauses in the First Amendment and explore 2 examples of how collective religious identity challenges the boundaries of free exercise and establishment. Exploring the impact of collective religious identity in relation to the religion clauses of the First Amendment should allow the reader to see how the prioritization of religious goals over civic obligations by school leaders can undermine legitimate purposes of public education, especially the aim of cultivating citizens capable of thriving in a pluralist state.