Profiles 1990

Despite almost four decades and billions of dollars in development activities, we are barely in a position to track the changing dynamics of poverty or to define with conviction the processes that entrap the poor in their misery. Accounting for about 90% of global poverty, rural poverty, through transmigration, is also a main contributor to urban poverty. It is in the rural areas of the world where poverty is most severe in human terms, where the hunger, hopelessness, hardship, and despair commonly associated with entrenched poverty are most pronounced, where basic health services, sanitation, educational opportunities, and other common amenities are most lacking. The alleviation of rural poverty is therefore tantamount to the alleviation of global poverty in its entirety. The State of World Rural Poverty offers the first comprehensive look at the economic conditions and prospects of the world's rural poor.

Biographical profiles of the current head of state and head of government, and other recent incumbents of these positions who remain significant and active political leaders.

Most Americans believe that local school districts are the only means by which citizens may exercise control over public education. Kathryn McDermott argues to the contrary that existing local institutions are no longer sufficient for achieving either equity or democratic governance. Not only is local control inequitable, it also fails to live up to its reputation for guaranteeing public participation and citizen influence. Drawing upon democratic theory and the results of field research in New Haven, Connecticut, and three suburbs, McDermott contends that our educational system can be made more democratic by centralizing control over funding while decentralizing most authority over schools to the level of schools themselves while enacting public school choice controlled for racial balance. To many people in Connecticut and elsewhere, the tension between equal opportunity for all students and local control of public education seems impossible to resolve. In 1996, the Connecticut Supreme Court ruled in Sheff v. O'Neill that local control produces unconstitutional segregation of public schools. Nearly all of the state's 169 towns operate their own public schools, and, like the towns they serve, the schools are generally homogeneous with respect to race and socioeconomic class. In the Sheff ruling, the court declared that making school districts coterminous with town lines "is the single most important factor contributing to the present concentration of racial and ethnic minorities in the Hartford public school system." At the same time, the court also acknowledged that the town-based school system "presently furthers the legitimate nonracial interests of permitting considerable local control and accountability in educational matters." In Connecticut and elsewhere, it has often seemed necessary to choose between local control and equity in public education, and local control has almost always won. McDermott argues that rather than seeing local control and equity as conflicting goals, policymakers should regard them as equally important components of democracy in public education. In her view, a truly democratic system of education should both encourage citizen participation in school governance and contribute to the formation and maintenance of a social order in which equality of opportunity prevails over hierarchies of privilege. Centralizing distribution of resources and using controlled choice to end racial isolation would provide greater equality of opportunity, while decentralizing management of schools would expand citizen participation. McDermott's conclusions break new ground in our understanding of local school governance itself and call into question the conventional wisdom about local participation. These findings should interest those who study school governance and reform—especially in an urban setting—as well as policy makers, administrators, teachers, students, and citizens eager to improve their schools.

A union list of serials commencing publication after Dec. 31, 1949.

Not only did Westinghouse win the first annual Malcolm Baldrige Quality Award in 1988, its Productivity and Quality Center (PQC) also trained such other Baldrige winners as Motorola, Xerox, Texas Instruments, Eastman-Kodak, and Milliken. Now, a key member of the PQC shares the never-before-published techniques that have saved Westinghouse and its quality trainees millions of dollars. Written in a direct, how-to style, this book focuses on cost-time management, showing readers how to look at the overall goals of the organization and pinpoint ways to reduce the time and cost of getting things done. Quality engineers and managers will learn to map all business transactions as a series of costs over time, to measure the effectiveness of their programs, and to prove their results to top management. Case studies from Westinghouse and its trainees illustrate the many principles discussed.