At its annual joint board and commission meeting (Washington, DC, November 10-11, 2010), American Association of Community Colleges (AACC) focused attention on college completion by presenting two panel discussions on the completion agenda, followed by breakout sessions in which participants were assigned to focus groups tasked with providing…

The stunning rate of change in modern society will make today's education obsolete tomorrow. Limiting educational planning to short-range objectives is no longer sufficient. To be effective, education must be committed to achieving goals and objectives reflective of the desires of the community and of school district personnel. The eight…

Advanced information, communication, computation and collaboration technologies, known as "cyberinfrastructure," have become essential elements for research, education, and innovation in the 21st century. A major challenge confronting the United States today is how to ensure that all colleges and universities, including those that have…

The effectiveness of existing contingency planning efforts at five community colleges, three colleges, and five universities during the Mount St. Helens eruptions in 1980 in Washington state was assessed. Planning efforts in the areas of institutional policy, academic policy, business office, physical plant, residence halls, financial aid, and…

The practical issues of financial, human, and political costs involved in the restructuring efforts undertaken by five Washington State secondary schools, each of which is a member of the Coalition of Essential Schools, are addressed in this paper. The crux of the restructuring problem is to develop ways to provide staff members with the needed…

Strategies are presented for fostering statewide program development and refinement in the field of special education. Sixteen observations about change are presented, with examples from various Washington statewide initiatives. Among the observations are the following: Reform should be promoted from within by empowering schools to explore…

Case studies in eight school settings identified the various curricula and services for delivering curricula to youth with disabilities. Settings represented a cross-section of schools in the Puget Sound Area of Washington State. Data were gathered through interviews and surveys of students, parents, special and general education teachers,…

The role of research and information in legislative decisionmaking is discussed. It is suggested that planning is of marginal utility to state legislatures. The primary obstacles to planning in the legislative arena are the turnover among state legislators, internal shifts of power, and the legislative tendency to deal with discrete policy issues…

While most community and technical colleges individually offer courses by distance learning, they are increasingly challenged to provide the full range of instructional and student support services needed for expanding distance education programs. To address this issue, Washington and Oregon community and technical colleges formed distance…

Speeches and discussions are transcribed in this report, which also includes a listing of the American Technical Education Association (ATEA) committee members, exhibitors, officers, and directory of speakers. Speeches covered "Human Resource Development" by Gene Rutledge; "The Impact of Technical Education on Economic…

This case study of a higher education policy-making process tested a conceptual model based on a combination of political systems, behavioral power, and influence theories. The study, which followed the course and outcomes of a branch campus policy formulated in Washington state over a four-year period (1985-89), sought to show that the ability of…