Over the past 10 years, New York has more than doubled its spending on elementary and secondary education, in a fervent attempt to produce greater student achievement and prepare our young people for the fast changing world in which they will have to earn a living. Better results have not been produced as the education system has focused on more…

For effective schools, leadership is vital. As the structure of American education evolved, a model of how a local school board should function emerged. The model is briefly summarized and research on educational leadership, challenges of school board service in New York State, and responsibilities of school boards are discussed. Key leadership…

This position paper examines educational policies, school effectiveness, and responses to broader public policy concerns in the context of the special needs of early adolescence. The policy issues under consideration derive from a statewide comprehensive survey of educational trends in the middle grades and are addressed in a statewide Regents…

Students drop out of school for a wide variety of reasons. Programs to discourage dropping out must therefore accommodate the actual needs of individual students rather than aim at the assumed needs of the "typical dropout." This document reviews school policies and programs that could affect dropout tendencies positively. Among these…