The purpose of this policy study was to report descriptive research on state-level policy and frameworks for accountability systems of alternative education in the United States. The six states; California, Colorado, Texas, Florida, Oklahoma, and North Carolina; identified in the 2010 Jobs for the Futures policy analysis of alternative education…

A graduate teaching assistant who lived through the Northridge quake in Los Angeles County reached some realizations about her habits of thinking in the wake of that experience. As students schooled or even trained in poststructuralist critical theory and/or protocols of postmodern cultural critique, this teaching assistant and some of her…

Each year, school districts in every state are required to file various financial reporting forms with their state education agency. Although these documents are often viewed more as a nuisance than a useful planning tool, they represent a wealth of information rarely exploited to full advantage by state or local policy makers. The research…

Part-time college instructors with children are not perceived as professionals, and therefore they often do not advance to full-time status. Their inability to move out of the area limits their possibilities for full-time work and colleges often exploit this. Of the part-time women interviewed by members of a panel at the Conference on College…

This study was designed to examine the school's role as a context of professional community for secondary school teachers. The literature suggests that conditions of shared goals, coherent instructional plans and curriculum, and collaboration within a faculty is largely a matter of effective site management. This paper questions the top down view…

California State Department of Education officials visited Azusa Unified School District as part of their study on the governance of education after Proposition 13. This article summarizes, from the District's perspective, the discussions on categorical programs and ways the State Department could help the district to improve education.…

California state officials vary in their perceptions of the functions and uses of state Department of Education evaluations, according to state legislators, legislative staff members, department administrators, and outside evaluators whose opinions were gathered through interviews and at a 1981 symposium. Highlighted here are the legislators'…

This paper explores the cultural images that underlie educational policy and regulation. Based on interviews with California officials involved in educational policy and governance, it argues that strategies for regulating education are limited by the commitment of officials and their publics to a language of individual benefits and individual…

Legislative mandates on sexual discrimination do not necessarily guarantee enduring change, as is demonstrated by the reinterpretation by the United States Supreme Court of Title IX of the Education Amendments to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In the landmark decision in "Grove City College v. Bell" in 1984, the court ruled that Title IX,…

After several lengthy evaluations of California's Early Childhood Education (ECE) program proved inadequate, unhappy legislators and educators finally found satisfaction in a brief, mimeographed report. Several factors were responsible for the success of this new evaluation, the "Interim Report on the Special Study of Selected ECE Schools…

Addressing the issue of testing and evaluation in English at the university level, this paper focuses on the development and use of the English Placement Test developed by the California State University system. The discussion of this testing program is placed within a framework of four testing principles: testing is an essential part of learning…

This presentation identifies factors which contributed to the rise of gifted/talented education programs in California from 1960 to 1987, factors contributing to the demise of such programs, and recommendations for improving the California Gifted and Talented Education (GATE) Program. Recent years have brought about a lessening of the program's…

States have enacted a variety of far-reaching educational reforms in recent years which have focused on a mix of standards for improved programs and greater accountability for both students and teachers. In California, teacher professionalism reforms, including induction reform, have been introduced. Research, now in its third and final year, has…