Focuses on secondary school departments in England, arguing that current approaches to school improvement do not adequately reflect or incorporate the department level. Highlights the processes that contribute to improved departmental performance, and subsequently, to school and classroom improvement, drawing upon empirical evidence from two…

Department chairpersons should guide their departments to meet contemporary challenges by focusing on fostering student learning more effectively, stimulating faculty development, and engaging in curriculum development that responds to new academic syntheses and multidisciplinary approaches. (JB)

States should take an active and direct role in education reform: supporting school reform efforts, providing technical assistance, defining and controlling educational content, and assessing the outcomes of education. (MLF)

Previous college department rankings based on the evaluations of others in the field are examined for their weaknesses, and the requirements of an adequate institutional ranking system are discussed. (MSE)

Introduces four articles based on an Education Commission of the States study that identified political and demographic elements interacting to improve schools and the states' role in the change process. Discusses several conditions critical to developing successful improvement programs, including political, monetary, and technical support. (MLH)

A survey of state education agencies (SEA's) in Alaska, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, and Washington, supported by a random sampling of SEA's elsewhere in the nation, revealed several aspects of education in which the publics of all the surveyed states expressed low confidence. This document identifies eight of these issues, indicating the…

Focuses on the legal framework that New Jersey has established that allows the state to assume responsibility for operating a school district that has been deemed unable or unwilling to meet minimum educational standards. Identifies some perceived deficiencies in the law and suggests some possible future directions. (71 footnotes) (MLF)

Chief state school officers have committed themselves to seek the elimination of the nation's dropout problem by the turn of the century. Two reasons are given for this unusually strong statement. First is the human or moral issue that leaves millions of youth destined to a life of poverty if school cannot be successful in meeting their needs.…

This document reprints a series of articles appearing in the Parsippany, New Jersey, "Daily Record" on October 25-30, 1987 and November 9, 1987. The series stresses that the New Jersey special education system has vastly improved from what existed prior to the 1975 Education for All Handicapped Children Act, but that the system still…

The back-to-basics movement and public demands for educational quality guarantees have led state education agencies (SEA's) to examine their options in four areas: definition of the basics, relevant curricular and programming alternatives, alternatives for evaluating achievement of basics-related goals, and methods of reporting achievements to the…

Recommendations are presented for a new form of school governance in British Columbia that takes into account current research on effective schools. In the model described, the provincial government provides the funding, sets the core curriculum, standards, and outcomes, ensures standardized measurement and reporting, and supports field research.…

This paper sets forth and clarifies state-level policy issues that are implicit in the recommendations for reform provided by recent major reports on the status of American education. For each report under consideration, four questions are posed: (1) Who is recommending what? (2) Does the recommendation make sense in a state's total program? (3)…