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Introduction: As more campuses embrace Open Educational Resources (OER) to increase access to course materials and reduce costs, librarians are often called on to lead the charge. But for those new to this work, especially when stepping into roles without clear guidance or established programs, it can be difficult to know where to begin. This case study describes how an academic library at an urban, research institution designed and implemented an open education week of events to reframe campus conversations around OER, not just as a cost-saving tool, but as a strategy for equity and connection. Description of Programs: This inaugural Open Education Week featured a series of events highlighting faculty and student voices, including faculty panels, student story displays, and skill-based workshops. The week was intentionally framed around storytelling to build emotional connection and shared purpose. By focusing on lived experience, the week moved beyond awareness-building and toward deeper engagement and community momentum. Evaluation: Qualitative feedback from attendees was collected through open-ended surveys and informal conversations. Participants emphasized the impact of hearing peer experiences, with several faculty initiating follow-up conversations about OER adoption or exploration. Next Steps: This article offers a replicable model for librarians who want to move beyond awareness and build meaningful engagement through their own OER programming. Future efforts will expand on this foundation with student-led initiatives and campus storytelling projects that frame open education as a shared, value-driven practice.

Milwaukee, one of the nation's most segregated metropolitan areas, implemented in 1990 a school choice program aimed at improving the education of inner-city children by enabling them to attend a selection of private schools. The results of this experiment, however, have been overshadowed by the explosion of emotional debate it provoked nationwide. In this book, John Witte provides a broad yet detailed framework for understanding the Milwaukee experiment and its implications for the market approach to American education. In a society supposedly devoted to equality of opportunity, the concept of school choice or voucher programs raises deep issues about liberty versus equality, government versus market, and about our commitment to free and universal education. Witte brings a balanced perspective to the picture by demonstrating why it is wrongheaded to be pro- or anti-school choice in the abstract. He explains why the voucher program seems to be working in the specific case of Milwaukee, but warns that such programs would not necessarily promote equal education--and most likely harm the poor--if applied universally, across the socioeconomic spectrum. The book begins with a theoretical discussion of the provision of education in America. It goes on to situate the issue of school choice historically and politically, to describe the program and private schools in Milwaukee, and to provide statistical analyses of the outcomes for children and their parents in the experiment. Witte concludes with some persuasive arguments about the importance of specifying the structural details of any choice program and with a call supporting vouchers for poor inner-city children, but not a universal program for all private schools. Voucher programs continue to be the most controversial approach to educational reform. The Market Approach to Education provides a thorough review of where the choice debate stands through 1998. It not only includes the \"Milwaukee story\" but also provides an analysis of the role, history, and politics of court decisions in this most important First Amendment area.

Can charter schools save public education? This radical question has unleashed a flood of opinions from Americans struggling with the contentious challenges of education reform. There has been plenty of heat over charter schools and their implications, but, until now, not much light. This important new book supplies plenty of illumination. Charter schools--independently operated public schools of choice--have existed in the United States only since 1992, yet there are already over 1,500 of them. How are they doing? Here prominent education analysts Chester Finn, Bruno Manno, and Gregg Vanourek offer the richest data available on the successes and failures of this exciting but controversial approach to education reform. After studying one hundred schools, interviewing hundreds of participants, surveying thousands more, and analyzing the most current data, they have compiled today's most authoritative, comprehensive explanation and appraisal of the charter phenomenon. Fact-filled, clear-eyed, and hard-hitting, this is the book for anyone concerned about public education and interested in the role of charter schools in its renewal. Can charter schools boost student achievement, drive educational innovation, and develop a new model of accountability for public schools? Where did the idea of charter schools come from? What would the future hold if this phenomenon spreads? These are some of the questions that this book answers. It addresses pupil performance, enrollment patterns, school start-up problems, charges of inequity, and smoldering political battles. It features close-up looks at five real--and very different--charter schools and two school districts that have been deeply affected by the charter movement, including their setbacks and triumphs. After outlining a new model of education accountability and describing how charter schools often lead to community renewal, the authors take the reader on an imaginary tour of a charter-based school system. Charter schools are the most vibrant force in education today. This book suggests that their legacy will consist not only of helping millions of families obtain a better education for their children but also in renewing American public education itself.

Few people have been more involved in shaping postwar U.S. education reforms--or dissented from some of them more effectively--than Chester Finn. Assistant secretary of education under Ronald Reagan, and an aide to politicians as different as Richard Nixon and Daniel Moynihan, Finn has also been a high school teacher, an education professor, a prolific and best-selling writer, a think-tank analyst, a nonprofit foundation president, and both a Democrat and Republican. This remarkably varied career has given him an extraordinary insider's view of every significant school-reform movement of the past four decades, from racial integration to No Child Left Behind. In Troublemaker, Finn has written a vivid history of postwar education reform that is also the personal story of one of the foremost players--and mavericks--in American education. Finn tells how his experiences have shaped his changing views of the three major strands of postwar school reform: standards-driven, choice-driven, and profession-driven. Of the three, Finn now believes that a combination of choice and standards has the greatest potential, but he favors this approach more on pragmatic than ideological grounds, arguing that parents should be given more options at the same time that schools are allowed more flexibility and held to higher performance norms. He also explains why education reforms of all kinds are so difficult to implement, and he draws valuable lessons from their frequent failure. Clear-eyed yet optimistic, Finn ultimately gives grounds for hope that the best of today's bold initiatives--from charter schools to technology to makeovers of school-system governance--are finally beginning to make a difference.

Fairport Middle School student Michele Kimbrough giggled nervously as she stood before her classmates, covering her mouth with her hand to staunch the rippling flow of laughter. Michele had reason to be nervous last week. The eighth-grader's teacher, Ann Meade, put the class in her hands - overhead projector, transparencies and all. Fairport teachers traded places with their students last week during American Education Week. The goal was to give the students first-hand experience in what it's like to be a teacher.

The National Geographic Society's effort to improve American geography education began in the mid-1980s, fueled by surveys and other evidence of an alarming lack of geographic knowledge among young people. The Geography Education Program has been a multi-pronged campaign that supports, trains, and empowers teachers to make a difference in their own states. It is based on five key strategies: 1) a grassroots network of state alliances of teachers, geography professors, and educational administrators; 2) teacher training at Society- and alliance-sponsored institutes and workshops; 3) development of innovative educational materials; 4) outreach to decision-makers; and 5) increasing public awareness through such vehicles as Geography Awareness Week and the National Geography Bee. The Society also has enlisted other geography organizations, such as the Association of American Geographers, to further their mutual goal. After 10 years of effort and 80 million-dollars spent, the Society is encouraged by many signs of progress, the most significant of which was the October 1994 publication of Geography for Life, National Geography Standards 1994. Its Chairman and President, Gilbert M. Grosvenor, has pledged to continue the campaign until geography illiteracy is eradicated.

WORCESTER - While there is little consensus among experts on the impact of technology on student learning, the use of computers appears to be raising students' scores in mathematics, according to a national report released yesterday. The report by Education Week, in collaboration with the Milken Exchange on Education Technology, tracked the relationship between computer usage and student achievement, based on the performance of fourth- and eighth-graders who took the math section of the 1996 National Assessment of Educational Progress test. Harold Wenglinsky, an associate research scientist who conducted the analysis for Education Week, said computers can be an effective tool for learning mathematics, if they are placed in the right hands and used in the right ways.