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The central hypothesis of all policy typologies is that distinctively different patterns of politics can be identified for different types of public policy issues. Lowi identified three different policy types, which he termed distributive, regulative, and redistributive, each of which triggers a distinctively different pattern of political behavior. Unfortunately, Lowi's categories were inductively derived and ambiguously defined, leading to disagreements over how to categorize particular policies. Hayes built on Lowi's seminal effort, deriving Lowi's three policy categories from two underlying dimensions and identifying additional categories Lowi's original formulation had missed. Using the minimum wage issue as an example, this article will identify a critical deficiency in both these typologies. While Hayes' typology defines the boundaries between policy categories more precisely than Lowi's, neither typology is equipped to deal with variations in political patterns occurring within a particular cell. As this article will show, the minimum wage issue, although consistently redistributive in Hayes' terms, has manifested three very different patterns of politics at different points in time. Accordingly, a typology of redistributive policies will be advanced to account for these variations in the redistributive politics of the minimum wage.

The research described in this article was a comparative study of science curriculum differentiation at two elementary schools that served students from different socioeconomic and ethnic backgrounds. Two schools in the same school district, Lake and Jefferson, were the sites for the research. Lake Elementary served a professional class and white neighborhood, but Jefferson Elementary served students from working-class/working poor and ethnically diverse backgrounds. The teachers and students in a fifth and sixth grade classroom at each school participated in the research. Research methods drew from ethnographic and linguistic traditions and focused on the microlevel everyday classroom interactions in which the curriculum is constructed. The results of the study show that the science curriculum was quite different between the two schools. The science curriculum at Lake emphasized organization and control for the purpose of preparing students for traditional notions of academic success and progress. At Jefferson, the science curriculum was constructed within an informal and conversational format in an effort to engage students in science. We suggest that it is difficult to determine if and how this curriculum differentiation might establish or enhance inequality in science education. Instead, we offer competing interpretations of the results that draw from current notions of best practice in the science education community. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Sci Ed85:239–262, 2001.

Extraocular muscle weakness is the most common presenting sign of myasthenia gravis (MG). More than half of patients presenting with symptoms isolated to these muscles (OMG) develop generalized myasthenia gravis (GMG) over the course of their illness. No clinical, laboratory, or electrophysiological features are recognized that identify these high-risk patients. We have therefore assessed the ability of single-fiber electromyography (SFEMG) to predict the development of GMG in patients presenting with OMG. Thirty-nine consecutive patients presenting with OMG underwent SFEMG of the extensor digitorum communis muscle as well as a battery of other laboratory and imaging studies at the time of diagnosis. All patients were followed prospectively for a minimum of 24 months or until they developed GMG. Two patients were excluded, leaving 37 for assessment. Twenty remained with pure OMG for the entire follow-up period (mean, 55 months). Twenty-six of the 37 had abnormal SFEMG studies at presentation. Eleven of these remained with OMG and 15 developed GMG. Fifty-eight percent of patients with an abnormal SFEMG developed GMG, whereas 82% of those with a normal study remained with OMG. Thus, a normal SFEMG was associated with MG remaining restricted to the extraocular muscles. (P = 0.036, Fisher's exact test), but an abnormal SFEMG was not predictive of subsequent development of GMG.