In a neoliberal society, accountability functions as the dominant technology of governing citizens. Reflecting this trend, the Pennsylvania State Department of Education (PDE) has been requiring teacher preparation programs to account for their candidates’ mastery of PDE competencies using electronic portfolios. Those competencies center around teacher candidates’ ability to apply their knowledge on the following areas in teaching: 1) subjects, 2) pedagogy, 3) learning theories, 4) assessment and 5) accommodation. Also, the competencies also include reflective skills, which are considered essential for continuous growth in one’s ability to apply these areas of knowledge in new situations. Among the four levels of reflections that critical educators present, 1) factual, 2) procedural, 3) justificatory, and 4) critical, PDE requires the first two levels. While these two basic levels of reflection are important, simply focusing on these two levels would result in producing teachers who lack critical consciousness and thus contribute to the sustenance of the status quo. In order to nurture critical teachers who promote social justice in and through education, teachers educators need to expect their teacher candidates to engage in reflections that surpass the expectations required by the state guidelines.

This paper provides an example of how an undergraduate pre-service teacher education program in Pennsylvania incorporates electronic portfolios in their course titled “Teaching Culturally Linguistically Diverse Students.” The paper demonstrates how the instructor and students in the course negotiated the tension between PDE competencies on reflection and critical practice of reflection (i.e., examination of one’s cultural identity and social-political implications of their teaching ). This case indicates the possibility for critical teachers to use an electronic portfolio as a site for both conformity and subversion to the dominant neoliberal discourse of teacher education, which places accountability at the center.

It is often said that Japanese higher education institutions should be more functionally- differentiated within the entire higher education system in order to make effective use of the limited resources in the context of the shrinking higher education population and tight government fiscal policy. The issues of the functional differentiation of higher education institutions are highly related to how the government allocates financial resources to higher education institutions. Japanese scholars and government administrators often look at and refer to the diversity of the American higher education system, especially the famous “Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education”. They have also focused on the US federal research grants system and financial aids to students. However, we have not yet got the total image of the flows of government funds to US higher education institutions. This article examines the scale and structure of flows of the government funds by using the IPEDS (The Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System) in order to understand the conditions and backgrounds of the effective functional differentiated higher education system.

In the US system, there are mainly three factors which make the understanding of the flows of government funds difficult. Firstly, there are several governments responsible for funding higher education institutions: federal government, state governments, and local governments. Secondly, there are several ways of funding: appropriations, grants and contracts, and student aids. Thirdly, there are various types of higher education institutions; public, private for-profit, and private not-for-profit in addition to the functionally differentiated institutions such as research universities, doctoral universities, master’s colleges & universities, baccalaureate colleges, associate’s colleges, special focus institutions and so on. We examine the flows of governmental funds based on the analysis of relationship between these three factors.

This study aims to clarify the actual conditions of educational stages changes in urban school districts in the United States and examine how improvements in the educational environment are carried out in the re-structured system. Specifically, it focuses on the recent grade span configuration change to the 8-4 system, analyzing why these changes are made, how they are implemented, and how the funds for providing the educational environment are secured. The materials analyzed include interviews with superintendents and elementary school principals in urban school districts, relevant newspaper articles, statistical data, and the financial statements of those school districts.

The results of the analysis revealed the following three points.

The first point is the reason for changing educational stages. School districts in urban areas have switched from the 5-3-4 educational system to the 8-4 system primarily to (1) respond to criticisms on the existing middle school system, (2) address the issue of transitioning, and (3) keep students from transferring to other school districts.

The second point is the actual state of institutional reform regarding how they provided the educational environment during the change of educational stages. In the Philadelphia school district, instead of implementing the changes all at once, it was done in phases by adding classes to each grade over several years. This method of implementation was also effective from the perspective of securing funds because the annual budget could be divided over several school years.

The third point is how capital funding was secured to provide the educational environment during the change of educational stages. In order to the maintain an adequate educational environment during those changes, the School District of Philadelphia implemented their capital improvement program by spending approximately $1.3 billion over five years starting in 2004, which is two to three times the normal expenditures. 61% of the capital funding was used for alterations and improvements, and 33% was used for new buildings and additions. The school district presiding over the school bore the responsibility for raising more than 95% of the capital funding revenue. It became clear that the School District of Philadelphia secured capital funding on their own by issuing variable rate debt, etc.* to provide its schools with an educational environment.

Since there were financial issues in providing facilities and equipment while changing educational stages, there were situations where the school district had to secure capital funding by borrowing money from the bank under the authority of the superintendent when their financial state was tight. To implement an improved educational environment when there was little funding from the state, school districts had to expand their financial options to secure funds. It became apparent that school district superintendents arranged the educational environment by considering how to secure and manage funds rather than using capital funding from a given budget.