Regional Educational Service Agencies (RESAs)--agencies between the state and local level--are an important resource for helping local educators cope with a variety of pressures from an increasingly complex environment. They do so by performing two functions. Political linkage provides knowledge about the impacts of mandates on specific districts…

Focusing on the promotion of reform and knowledge use in school districts, this paper reports on data from a study investigating assistance and enforcement strategies adopted by three types of regional educational service agencies. Assistance in this context means provision of legal or program knowledge needed to operate successful programs.…