The role of state education agencies (SEAs) has shifted significantly from low-profile, compliance activities like managing federal grants to engaging in more complex and politically charged tasks like setting curriculum standards, developing accountability systems, and creating new teacher evaluation systems. The move from compliance-monitoring…

The May 2012 State Educational Technology Directors Association (SETDA) report, "The Broadband Imperative: Recommendations to Address K-12 Education Infrastructure Needs," pushed educators and policy makers nationwide to increase high-speed broadband access in schools, with specific recommendations regarding access, funding, and policies…

The locally-elected school board is entrusted with the responsibility of maintaining, developing and operating local schools. School board members make important decisions with long-lasting implications for their community and its citizens. They establish a vision for the public education system in their community, are responsible for hiring and…

America brims with education data and these days it seems everyone in education claims to be guided by data. In this book, leaders and scholars map the landscape of data providers and users and explores why what is supplied by the former but frequently fails to meet the needs of the latter. It documents the barriers to collecting good information,…

The Lifelong Learning Project was a 3-year effort launched in March 1980 to assist educational leaders in California, Colorado, Illinois, Kansas, New York, and Ohio in their planning and coordination of adult learning services. These six states undertook a variety of project activities aimed at establishing and maintaining a participatory planning…

This report presents the Kansas edition of the National Council on Teacher Quality's 2008 "State Teacher Policy Yearbook." The 2008 "Yearbook" focuses on how state policies impact the retention of effective new teachers. This policy evaluation is broken down into three areas that encompass 15 goals. Broadly, these goals examine…

During a pilot project on the state role in facilitating adult learning, six states were asked (1) to establish and maintain a participatory planning mechanism for gathering information and building consensus among the public and private agencies and institutions within their states and (2) to use that mechanism in formulating policy…

The first National Drug Control Strategy set ambitious two and five-year performance based goals: (1) to lower the rate of drug use by 10 percent over 2 years among both youth and adults; and (2) to lower the rate by 25 percent over 5 years. The chapters in this updated version are keyed to the strategies three priorities: (1) Stopping Use Before…