Study examined roles assumed by state departments of education in bloodborne pathogen exposure control to protect physical educators and athletic coaches from contracting HIV and hepatitis B. Surveys indicated that 75% of states required written exposure control plans, but many failed to require full compliance with mandated federal guidelines.…

Paper considers the strategy of using aligned policies to encourage more ambitious instruction for all students from the perspective of elementary classroom teachers charged with implementing such instruction. Nine elementary teachers' responses to their local school district's efforts to press more ambitious ideas about literacy instruction are…

Discusses recent shift in role of school district administrator from that of "chief" to that of coordinator, who influences educational policy decisions through "political" style. Describes new postgraduate internship programs for beginning teachers in Alberta and British Columbia; outlines effective responses of district…

The second of two articles reporting on a study conducted at the J.A. Turner Professional Library, a professional education library in Canada, presents questionnaire and interview data on library services and resources for three groups of library users: school board senior administration, school board program coordinators, and university faculty.…

Superintendents (n=89) and school board presidents (n=88) from 89 of the 100 largest school districts in the country are surveyed to identify the major problems confronting large districts. Financial issues and related concerns are the most often identified problems. Critical characteristics of superintendents and districts are discussed. (SLD)

Experiences of the Des Moines (Iowa) public schools as they work for educational improvement and school restructuring are described. The school system will be considered successful only if what is taught is learned at an acceptable level by all students. Restructuring is traced from its 1989 inception to the present. (SLD)

Proposes ways to ensure teacher quality through professionalizing teacher hiring and dismissal policies. State and local education authorities must stop undercutting current standards and must end emergency credentials and the misassignment of teachers. Suggests ways to accommodate teacher shortages until additional qualified teachers are found.…

Discusses how using "Pickering v. Board of Education" or "Hazelwood School District v Kuhlmeier" as precedents in cases involving classroom speech by teachers has fostered court inconsistency. Proposes a judicial standard that emphasizes adequate notice to teachers when certain speech is proscribed and scrutinizes school-board…

Focuses on a low-performing school district to review the problems of school reform and accountability, and to reveal the set of prevailing conditions and themes that make change more complicated. It is argued that the politics of race, poverty, the vacuums in communication and leadership, and the uncritical mass of human resources dramatically…

Chief state finance officers of 24 states were surveyed to discover state legislatures' response to school-finance litigation affecting small and rural school districts. In 17 of 21 states with final constitutionality rulings, funding formulas for rural districts did not change as a result. (Contains 25 references.) (MLH)

Selecting a site for a new school is an important decision for school board members. To avoid site-selection catastrophes, ask for a report about the planning steps. Document estimates of purchase and development costs; and project budget and a timeline for acquisition, design, and construction. Questions that should be answered are listed. (MLF)

In her first year as superintendent of the Atlanta Public Schools, Beverly Hall encountered what she describes as the nearly universal disbelief that poor children of color can achieve high levels of learning. This chapter recounts how she confronted this and other obstacles and challenges as the new leader of the Atlanta Public Schools. Hall is…

The government of Ontario (Canada) announced, in December 1979, its position on three major issues of school governance currently in dispute in the Ottawa and Carleton school systems. The first announcement (overriding recommendations made in 1974 by the Mayo Commission and again in March 1979 in the government's "Education Green Paper")…

Although educational leaders have been coping with declining enrollment for almost a decade, educational researchers have begun to focus on the topic only recently. The first part of this introduction to a special issue of the Peabody Journal of Education briefly summarizes the contents of the subsequent essays, which are intended to bridge the…

Although the nation is spending more on its public schools than ever before, American students score poorly on standardized tests in comparison to other countries. Rising spending has had little effect on educational results because of a dramatic decline in labor productivity in public schools. Research on class size indicates that efficient class…