This paper considers the significance of justice in maintaining local public schools as integrated schools where children in the same area should all attend. Recently, local public schools are not assumed to be the best and only schools by parents while better alternatives including independent schools seem to be available for their children. It is becoming difficult to persuade parents not to opt out of local public schools in the age when parents are permitted and even encouraged to choose by themselves schools suitable for their children. In fact, more than 20% of pupils of the 23 Wards of inside Tokyo do not go on to public junior high schools but to independent private schools. Ulrich Beck called this trend individualization where parents prefer choosing freely over being treated equally regarding the groups in which their children are being educated. Although formally, equal opportunity of education is still assured for every child, substantial inequality prevails between the different learning groups. This paper suggests that substantial equality of education demands parental approval for mutual responsibility in helping all children to attend the same school and to exchange learning resources with each other. John Rawls is well known for formulating two principles of justice: equal freedom and open opportunity. He also made an important distinction between distributive justice and allocative justice. According to Rawls, distributive justice requires sharing the common resources fairly among those who contributed in producing them, while allocative justice only requires assigning the given resources such as national budget to each area and institution according to the need. This distinction is relevant in maintaining local public schools as integrated schools : substantial equal opportunity in education cannot be assured by following allocative justice but by adopting distributive justice, as opportunity in education is a sort of social resources to be produced and observed by people of the same area. The Coleman's Report (1966) is regarded as a typical case proposing educational reform to introduce integrated schools instead of racially segregated schools to every area. Coleman expected children of different cultural backgrounds to exchange their learning resources with each other. But he did not arrange the incentive to exchange learning resources between white and black children before the introduction of integrated schools. Hence quite a few white parents withdrew their children from integrated schools and chose independent schools for their children to be educated among the peer group with similar aspiration. Coleman's conception of integrated schools shows the difficulty of maintaining local public schools for all the children in the same area. On the other hand, some parents do keep their children at local public schools even though they are given the choice to opt out of them. Albert Hirschman called such behavior loyalty and attributed it to these parents' conviction that the existence of public schools is a public goods from which no one can retreat. In conclusion, this paper emphasizes the role of justice to arbitrate the claim for free choice of education and the claim for equal opportunity of education.

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The purpose of this article is to consider the alternatives to the finance system of education, especially that of compulsory education in Japan. Our compulsory education finance system has two main issues. Firstly, public elementary and secondary schools have a weekly finance base. Secondly, it is necessary to build up new systems and rules of resource allocation and funding corresponding to expanding the territory of Japanese public education. Devolution to schools of financial authority is an essential way to provide effective services thorough public schools to children. However, in Japan, 90 percent of the principals of public elementary and secondary schools recognize that, "The budget of my school is not sufficient". Public schools within compulsory education are in a difficult situation in that schools are required to provide high quality service but restricted in their power in regard to personnel affairs and financial decisions. Securing stable revenue sources for municipalities as responsible agents for local school management and administrative devolution to schools is important to improve this situations. The expanding of the territory of public education and the necessity for new funding systems and rules are analyzed from three perspectives based on three positions. The first position calls for the expansion of the "National Minimum" (standard of living) and asks that public schools address many problems such as pupils with special educational needs but recognizes that funding inequality among local governments and schools is a real problem. The second position recognizes the necessity of welfare support to families and children because it is the precondition of compulsory education. The third position focuses on the importance of public expense to "paid education opportunity" as the frontier of the public education system. Following that analysis, three political values, (egalitarianism, efficiency strategy of government finance, and communitarianism) are examined as they might be used to restructure the finance system of compulsory education. From the viewpoint of egalitarianism, both equity among local governments and equity among children are important. The efficiency strategy of government finance calls for us to increase educational budget needs to enhance accountability of schools and education boards. From the viewpoint of communitarianism, the role of local government is appreciated which creates unique challenges beyond the existing public school system. Finally the conditions of restructuring the Japanese education finance system are proposed. The principal basis of the restructuring is egalitarianism. The financing system of public compulsory education is required to redress the inequality among local governments and schools and at the same time establish equality among children. In particular, introducing national standards of school staff to match the expanding "National Minimum" and financial devolution to schools which ensure effective management of recourses at school level are considered to be effective policies. Therewith, the funding system for private schools, alternative schools and out-of-school learning also need to be designed. This is because funding these services can increase the opportunity of children to access the education outside of existing public schools as a method to narrow the gap between rich households and poor households. Some interesting policies for public expenditure to these "paid education opportunities" has been carried out in some local governments. More empirical research is needed to evaluate such challenges. In any case, to increase the funding for compulsory education, enhancinge the accountability of schools and education boards are required conditions.

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This paper tries to think of the difficulties of creating the alternative educational system through examining the small schools movement in the Unites States. Small schools are small scale learning environments, managed autonomously, and created through the systems of charter schools, schools-within-a-school, and so on. These schools introduced the progressive ways of instruction and assessment from the 1980s to the l990s in the U.S. After learning about the performance of small schools throughout the nation, the U.S. Department of Education and private foundations started supporting schools and districts to create small schools, and the number of these schools was growing enormously in the 2000s. Many of these schools, however, have not been managed by highly motivated teachers and have not focused on progressive ways of instruction and have mainly focused on raising scores on standardized tests required by the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. Moreover, it has come to public attention that these schools were not raising test scores and have caused turmoil among schools and teachers in many districts. From that point the concept of small schools has been reexamined by educators and researchers. Why could the small schools movement not fulfill the goals proponents sought, despite huge financial resources having been poured into this movement? I analyzed this question from two viewpoints. The first is the change of the goal itself. Earlier proponents and practitioners of small schools sought to teach higher-order thinking skills alternative to the current approach through progressive ways of instruction, but this goal has changed gradually to teach the skills for standardized tests in these past 30 years. The second is that Smaller Learning Communities (SLC), which is a way of creating small schools through dividing a large high school into small schools, have essential difficulties, like the divisiveness and the stratification among SLCs. Based on the analysis, I further analyzed the difficulties of experimentation in search of alternative education systems, from three viewpoints: quality assurance, fairness, and sustainability. As for quality assurance, its system should be created deliberately in response to the goal of experimentation. As for fairness and sustainability, we should build common understanding for the need of experimental schools among stakeholders, and avoid to be viewed as "coercion of choice." Finally, I cited some prospective approaches to overcome these difficulties.

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This paper points out, from the standpoint of a study of the life course of teachers, seven problems that exist in the current teacher education reform in modern Japan. The paper presents alternative means to change the current situation. The seven problems and alternative ways are as follows. The first is a conversion of the mode of thinking about the development of teachers: it is to convert the mode of thinking from monotonous and continuous accumulation to discontinuous modification corresponding to new situations. The second is a conversion of the mode of thinking related to teacher competence: it is to convert the mode of thinking from mastery of knowledge and skills applicable in all situations to creation of the most appropriate interpretation and judgment according to specific situations. The third is a conversion of the mode of thinking about the specialization of teachers: it is to convert the mode of thinking from analyzing factors in a particular area and pursuing rigorous solutions to synthesizing factors spanning widely varying areas and pursuing the most appropriate solutions. The fourth is a conversion of the mode of thinking about teacher education: it is to convert the mode of thinking from enhancing instructional programs to train teachers to improving networks to develop teachers. The fifth is a conversion of the mode of thinking about the evaluation of teachers: it is to convert the mode of thinking from placing value on evaluation results and their objective measurement to placing value on evaluation processes and their transparency. The sixth is a conversion of the mode of thinking about teacher educators: it is to convert the mode of thinking from formal teacher educators based on vertical relationship between the instructing and instructed to informal teacher educators based on the horizontal relationship of mutual support and encouragement. The seventh is a conversion of the mode of thinking related to the organizations undertaking teacher education: it is to convert the mode of thinking from trying to make one-dimensional institutionalization having the function of supporting and encouraging the development and competency formation of teachers in form only to a mode of thinking designed to build multidimensional networks for which the function of support becomes fertile. The seven points presented above represent investigative and practical challenges in today's teacher education reform. With the implementation of these challenges, the principle is to support students and teachers to build up independent activities that they form themselves in terms of development and competence. The principle of the organizations undertaking the challenges is also to reconstruct themselves as autonomous and cooperative organizations on a certain regional basis. This will engender the recovery of the function of support to both support and encourage the development and competency-formation of teachers, which has existed in daily life activities and human networks.

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A view that "we now confront a turning point of our age" is a fait accompli in discussions of educational reforms. So, we are not inclined to examine what is the turning point. This article argues that some university admission policies in contemporary Japan are based on a certain long-term trend of the declining mean of university entrants' academic scores rather than based on a view of the turning point. At first, we traced institutional changes of university admissions systems in Japan. We showed two points that characterized the changes after the 1990's: 1) An introduction and expansion of the National Center Test (by the National Center for the Entrance Examination), and 2) an introduction and expansion of the AO application system. Second, we reconfirmed a certain long-term trend. As we know through many previous research studies, the greatest change for the last 50 years is a rising university progression rate. We showed a figure that plotted the lowest estimated value of academic achievement score (hensachi) needed to enter a university, using the progression rates. As a result, we could reconfirm statistically that the mean of university entrants' academic scores continued to decrease for the long term. Third, we suggested that we tend to argue from two premises when we discuss the university admission system in contemporary Japan: One is to take it for granted that students' academic achievement is very important, and the other is to highlight a new concept of the new competency. The first pattern of the discussions often gave us some regulations. For example, a recent reform is to keep a level of academic ability of applicants through the AO admissions system. The idea of 'Test for articulation of high school-university' has also arisen from such discussions about their academic abilities. However, these discussions for keeping their academic ability tend to apply the logic of elite selection for mass or universal higher education entrance. A second pattern is to find a recent expansion of the AO entrance system as a transformation of social selection: the coming of hyper-meritocracy or the learning capital society. However, many AO systems in each university are introduced as just a survival strategy for winning more students in the era of declining birth rate. Furthermore, the AO system is not introduced in elite universities. So, we should not interpret the expansion of AO system as a transformation of social selection. A common perspective of both discussions is "modern entitlement". This is more easily caused by a normalization of ability anxiousness in the educational expansion than 50 years ago. So, it is necessary to think carefully about contemporary reforms in educational systems without "modern entitlement".

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