Barbara Schneider

How do young people envision their occupational futures? What do teenagers feel about their schooling and after-school work, and how do these experiences affect their passage to adult work? These are the questions that psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and sociologist Barbara Schneider posed in their five-year study of adolescents. The results provide an unprecedented window on society's future through which we can glimpse how today's youth are preparing themselves for the lives they will lead in the decades to come.

Drawing on several principles of sociological theory, James S. Coleman and his colleagues construct a new design for American schooling. The authors present compelling evidence on the deficits of our educational system compared to other countries, arguing that the problems are the result of inappropriate incentives for teachers, students, and parents. Asserting that most American school systems are driven by administrative needs, the authors propose school designs that would shift the focus to student achievement output as the driving force behind public education. The move from an administratively driven system to an output-driven system would require the use of external standards a method of evaluating school and student performance gains over time a means of rewarding students, teachers and parents for academic performance gains and the encouragement of informal norms that would support the new educational goals. Basing their recommendations on two national longitudinal data sets, each with a sample of over 1000 schools exhibiting variations in organizational design, the authors identify specific variations that have been shown to promote growth and achievement.

Parental involvement with children at home, in school, and in the community is one of the most important factors in educational success. Yet we know very little about the most effective approaches to parental intervention. Moreover, not all parents have the same resources or opportunities to act on the educational expectations they have for their children. This book examines the resources available to parents and the actions parents can take to further their children's education. It is the first study of the subject based on major survey data, drawing from the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988?a national survey of 26,000 eighth graders, their parents, teachers, and school administrators. The authors explore several important debates, including the extent to which parental involvement can mitigate the constraints of poverty for minorities and disadvantaged students, school choice and equality of educational opportunity, and the effects that school-sponsored activities involving parents have on educational performance. Certain to change the thinking of educators and policymakers, this book is essential reading for scholars and parents as well.

Johannes Schulze, von 1818 bis 1840 leitender Beamter im Berliner Kultusministerium, hat in praktischer Umsetzung der -Staatspadagogik- Hegels massgeblich zur Etablierung des preussischen Gymnasiums als der Standesschule kunftiger Gelehrter und Staatsdiener beigetragen. Die vorliegende Studie stellt die geistesgeschichtlichen und historischen Voraussetzungen fur Schulzes Reformen dar und weist an den einzelnen bildungsadministrativen Massnahmen die sukzessive Grundlegung des neuzeitlichen Gymnasiums nach. In den Anhang wurden bisher unveroffentlichte Dokumente zu Schulzes Wirksamkeit aufgenommen. Die Arbeit wurde mit dem Kolner Universitatspreis 1987 ausgezeichnet."