published_or_final_version / Education / Master / Master of Education

published_or_final_version / Education / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

This study, The Privatization of Special Education, addresses a shift in the provision of special education and related services to students with disabilities in the Commonwealth of Virginia. Students with disabilities are being publicly placed in private day and residential schools at public expense. In Virginia, 125 private schools are licensed by the Virginia Department of Education to serve students with Disabilities. The purpose of this study was to develop a profile of programs, services, and interventions offered in private education schools. This nonexperimental design study focused on a secondary data source: the Virginia Department of Education, Private Schools for Students With Disabilities 2010 Annual Survey. Completed surveys were returned by all 125 schools. Results indicated that the majority of private schools licensed to serve students with disabilities are day schools. Students with an Emotional Disability, Other Health Impairment, Specific Learning Disability, and Autism are the most frequently reported disability classifications. Schools tend to be run by corporations and report being accredited by the Virginia Association of Special Education Facilities. Schools offer varying curricula, programs, and services in a variety of settings. This comprehensive profile adds to the body of knowledge or private schools serving students with disabilities in the Commonwealth of Virginia.

This thesis examines from an historical perspective the series of events between 1995 and 1999 in which the public school teachers’ union, the New South Wales Teachers federation, challenged the NSW and Australian government’s provision of funding to private schools. Such funding is known colloquially as state aid. The state aid struggle is conceived in this thesis as an industrial relations contest that went beyond issues simply of state aid. The state aid struggle was a centrepiece of the Teachers Federation’s broader challenge to government’s intensification of efforts to reduce the federation’s effectiveness in shaping the public school system’s priorities. This thesis contends that the decisive importance of the state aid struggle arose from the fundamental strategy used by governments to lower the cost of schooling over time. To achieve this they undertook the state aid strategy – cost reductions would flow from residualising public schools, de-unionising teachers and deregulating wages and conditions. The state aid strategy was implemented through those areas of policy and funding over which the Federation had negligible control or where the Federation’s membership was disunited. The Federation was undermined by governments using policy initiatives to fragment teacher unity. By the end of 1999, governments’ prosecution of the state aid strategy did not seem to have been diverted from the main thrust of its course by the federation’s struggle. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Thesis (M. Ed.)--University of Hong Kong, 1997. / Includes bibliographical references (leaf 132-134).

Thesis (M.Ed.)--University of Hong Kong, 1997. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 132-134). Also available in print.

published_or_final_version / Education / Master / Master of Education

Woo, Chak Kei Jacqueline. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2011. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 338-351). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstract also in Chinese.

published_or_final_version / Education / Master / Master of Education

Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Western Sydney, 2003. / A thesis presented to the University of Western Sydney in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Includes bibliography.