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We explore how K-8 student scholars experience culturally relevant texts provided during Freedom Schools summer camps, discuss ways Freedom Schools can be a vehicle for youth to become advocates for social change, and consider opportunities created by Freedom Schools for community engagement and partnerships. Mixed methods were used to investigate the experiences of 38 scholars at two different Freedom Schools sites (one rural and one mid-sized urban) in the southeastern U.S. The majority of scholars identified as African American and lived in low-income households. Primary data sources included scholar surveys and reading assessments, camp observations, and interviews with scholars, as well as our own personal reflections as the Research Director (Alysia Roehrig) and Co-Executive Directors (Kristal M. Clemons and Keely Norris) for the sites. We triangulated descriptive statistics from surveys with qualitative data, primarily from interviews, which we analyzed using open coding and axial coding to develop themes (Strauss & Corbin, 1998). The majority of scholars, who participated in the 2016 North Florida Freedom Schools, reported being able to identify with specific characters and situations in the books included in the culturally relevant reading summer program, and they expressed positive thoughts and feelings about the books. Most scholars (74%) maintained or gained in instructional reading levels and did not experience summer learning loss. Children’s confidence that they could act prosocially also increased significantly during the summer camps, which children characterized as different from regular school. Freedom Schools can offer a valuable forum for diverse community members to learn about one another, focus on their strengths, and become agents for social change. We provide suggestions for how other communities can implement the Freedom Schools model.

This paper is an examination of the rationale for the policy of supplying public funds for the support of schools run by private organizations. The example of the policy chosen for discussion is a current proposal of the Australian Schools Commission. It is noted that policies of this sort are generally defended by reference to a principle of freedom of choice. However there can be a conflict between freedom of choice for parents and freedom of choice for children in that parents sometimes exercise their freedom to choose schools which will reinforce their own influence and help to bring up their children in a predetermined mould with the same ideological beliefs and personal values as themselves. Public funding of private schools, it is argued, extends the freedom of parents to choose from a range of schools, but the effect is often to limit the opportunity of children to grow up free to make their own ideological and life‐style decisions. It is suggested that if one values this latter type of freedom one ought consistently to support pluralist public schools in which a wider variety of values and points of view are represented.

This chapter offers practicable alternatives to some of the most pressing problems facing urban public education in the United States. The narrowing of the curriculum and the emphasis on “high stakes testing” and test preparation has contributed greatly to the high dropout rates in urban public schools. “Freedom Schooling: A New Approach to Federal-Local Cooperation in Public Education” was published in 1978 to address these problems by calling for an expansion of alternative public schools modeled after the innovative educational programs developed at urban magnet schools in the arts, music, science, foreign languages and cultures, sports and athletics, and other fields. Since that time, research on the public magnet schools has revealed that the innovative curricula increase student motivation, lower dropout rates, and produce levels of academic achievement higher than in traditional public schools. In calling for the development of “freedom schools” as alternatives to the traditional public schools, the goal is to motivate the students through the innovative content areas and have them pursue mastery of specific skills and talents in the arts, music, sports, technology, and other areas. Moving beyond the narrow emphasis on testing in reading and mathematics, students attending the “freedom schools” would be expected to demonstrate mastery of specific artistic forms, musical techniques, athletic practices, technological innovations, or other skills. The opening of “freedom schools,” focused on mastery learning, would address the academic failure in urban public schools by raising motivational levels and developing student mastery in specific areas of educational practice.

The development and progressive refinement of the concept of academic freedom has generally occurred without material participation by the American business school. Whereas the business school looms large as a component of higher education in the twenty-first century, most believe that it is indifferent or perhaps hostile to the concept of academic freedom. For the most part, business school faculty fail to share the liberal political leanings of their colleagues from across the university, and therefore are less likely to find themselves to need academic freedom protection from those who would like to squelch opinions that run contrary to government and establishment elites. This chapter recognizes the fundamental alignment of what is taught in the business school and what business faculty research. However, that does not gainsay prospects for academic freedom protection when such is not the case. The chapter explores public interest dimensions of being a faculty member in a business school and how these might be manifested. Examples of controversial work are offered for each of the major business disciplines.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the most significant censorship issues faced by UK school librarians today and to determine what factors influence attitudes towards these issues.

A questionnaire was designed, closely based on that used for a previous survey of UK librarians in 2004. It was distributed online and 96 responses were received.

Overall, respondents were more likely to express support for intellectual freedom in theory than in practice. Statements that prompted the strongest pro-censorship responses related to access issues, namely, labelling and filtering. A number of librarians place significant emphasis on their personal ability, or right, to determine whether or not resources are included in the collection. There was evidence of a difference in practical application depending on whether librarians worked with pre-school children or were members of professional associations.

The findings suggest a need for further research into the role of professional associations in supporting school librarians faced by censorship issues, especially those who support the youngest students.

The findings suggest that while school librarians hold strong pro-intellectual freedom views, they may need additional support to put these into practice. School librarians are undoubtedly in a challenging position, often being solo workers; they need support to find ways to uphold professional intellectual freedom principles within a school setting.

The purpose of this study is to analyze the first major federal education policy, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, and the most recent federal policy, the Every Student Succeeds Act of 2015, through a Black critical theory (BlackCrit) lens to understand better how these educational policies have served as antiblack projects. Furthermore, this study locates examples of educational Freedom Dreams in the past and present to imagine new possibilities in Black education.

By analyzing education policy documents and history through BlackCrit methods, the authors expose how education policy is inherently an antiblack project. Freedom Dreams catalyze possibilities for future education.

The data confirms that while these policies purport equity and accountability in education, they, in practice, exacerbate antiblackness through inequitably mandated standardized testing, distributed funding and policed schooling.

This paper applies BlackCrit analysis of education policy to reimagine Black educational possibilities.

The human development and capability approach (HDCA) and its associated participatory method is receiving growing attention as a useful conceptual development for comparative international education. HDCA challenges the economism so prevalent in world development thinking and, instead, looks at development as a process of enhancing persons’ incrementally achieved substantive freedoms from deprivations. The centrality of the person replaces the centrality of income growth.

The application of HDCA to the study of the role of education that promotes social justice change is illustrated by using an empowerment-capability framework to the long-term study of the benefits of village schooling for rural girls in western China.

Using HDCA to identify influences on social change, we derive a much more nuanced and valuable multi-dimensional view of human development, which enables us to draw broad implications for more effective policy. National policies should use a multi-dimensional informational base including equality, sustainability, and non-market dimensions of well-being as well as market production.

The purpose of this paper is to describe and analyse the development of school autonomy, school leadership and curriculum innovation in England over the past 40 years. It provides a baseline picture for the wider international study on school autonomy and curriculum innovation.

An initial literature review was undertaken, including policy document analysis. Interviews and observations were undertaken with participants on a pilot professional programme for school leaders seeking to develop their school curriculum.

While all schools in England have needed to adapt their curricula to reflect the new National Curriculum introduced from 2014, relatively few schools appear to have used this opportunity to design genuinely innovative curricula that respond to the changing needs of learners in the twenty-first century. This includes the academies and free schools – currently around one in four schools – which are not legally required to follow the National Curriculum. The authors posit that leadership agency by principals and their professional teams is more important than policy/legal freedoms for securing curriculum innovation. Such agency appears to depend on the capacity and confidence of leaders to shape an alternative and innovative curriculum in the face of structural constraints, in particular England’s sharp accountability system, effectively making these leaders “rebels against the system”.

The empirical findings are preliminary and based on a small convenience sample.

Given England’s position as a relatively extreme example of high-autonomy-high-accountability quasi-market school reforms this paper provides valuable insights on school autonomy and curriculum innovation that can inform policy and practice more widely.

This chapter addresses the balancing act between curriculum guidance and curriculum space, against the backdrop of an integral curriculum review at the national/macro level in the Netherlands, labelled ‘Curriculum.nu’. As part of this review initiative, many choices have to be made, reflecting answers to the following two questions: What balance is needed between curriculum regulation at the macro level and the provision of curricular space for schools at the meso and the micro level? And, what are the related responsibilities of all involved in the educational system web in order to make the curriculum change successful? Before getting to tentative answers, the chapter will provide an introduction to curriculum policy in the Netherlands and will offer an overview of the motives, aims, approaches and preliminary results of Curriculum.nu. The provisional answers include a set of research-informed principles for making the curriculum review efforts a success, including a call for dovetailing the various curriculum layers and for a strategic curriculum mix of room for school-specific decision-making, substantive guidance, support by exemplification and firm investments in professional development.

The policy of radical devolution of responsibility for educational decision making is criticised. Current Western Australian and Victorian moves towards self‐governing public schools and earlier moves in that direction in the 1970s are briefly reviewed, and a wide agreement on the progressive nature of these changes is noted. That agreement is questioned. The potential of this policy shift to increase in several ways the inequalities between schools in affluent and poor areas is described. The tendency is noted for the policy to be propounded by reference to the values of diversity and freedom of choice rather than to egalitarian values. Devolution of power over schooling is placed in the context of a trend in Australian society since the 1970s towards increasing concentration of privilege and more extreme class stratification. Ideologically the period has been marked by a shift to the right, away from egalitarianism towards the ideology of individual freedom, competition and privatisation. The flight to private schools is presented as an aspect of this general trend in Australian society. It is argued that the trend towards diversity and local control in public schooling should be seen as another aspect of this shift to the right, which has, as its central social function, a sharpening of the differences between the schooling of the rich and the schooling of the poor, and therefore a facilitation of the inheritance of affluence and poverty.