Canada's positioning within global sustainable development commitments has shifted: instead of fulfilling visible leadership positions through international accords, Canada is now perceived as an environmental laggard. Against this larger political context of governmental inaction and environmental injustice, we present the results of a systematic…

The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) has ushered in a new era of flexibility for state policies and practices related to low-performing schools. Will the states make changes? What aspects of change will need additional support? This descriptive, mixed methods study uses survey data from turnaround leaders in all 50 states and an extant document…

Since the Florida State Department of Education promoted lesson study as a stateside teacher professional development model using the Race to the Top funding, school districts across the state have taken various approaches to promote lesson study. However, we do not know yet how district leaders made sense of this new model of teacher professional…

School facilities are some of the most underutilised public assets in Australia. Yet, opportunities to better utilise and enhance school facilities though offering a range of services to growing communities are increasingly being recognised. Across the country, state governments are endorsing the development of "schools as community…

This self-study explores an educational policy-making project initiated, facilitated, and implemented by direct stake-holders through a deliberative, intentional process involving teacher educators, policy-makers, and state regulators. As such, it serves as an example of a high-stakes political change process using principles of deliberative…

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…

This case study provides an illustration of the heuristic practices of a high-performing research department, which in turn, will help build much needed models applicable in the context of large urban districts. This case study examines the accountability, planning, evaluation, testing, and research functions of a research department in a large…

Information about deans that may be helpful to department chairs is presented, based on the findings of four national surveys of deans. The surveys of social science, graduate, continuing education, and arts and sciences deans covered the deans' role in resource allocation to departments, teaching and research support for faculty, tenure and…

In a response to the Minnesota Conference on the Future of Doctoral Study in English, states that the consensus to embrace rhetoric as a unifying focus would undercut small colleges. (MM)

The politics of assessment in New Jersey are examined in this study. Two basic questions addressed are: (1) what roles did competing interest groups play in the development and utilization of statewide assessment? and (2) has the controversy over the Educational Assessment Program (EAP) changed the impact of any of these groups on the future…

This paper presents findings of a study that examined outcomes of a professional-development program designed to help department heads in Ontario, Canada, facilitate change in secondary schools. Department heads in three schools in two Roman Catholic school districts in Ontario participated in the program. The heads were faced with implementing…

During 1974-75, a nine-month field study of the Michigan Department of Education (MDE) was performed. Researchers observed MDE members at work, attended meetings, conducted interviews, and read documentary material. Attention was focused on the MDE at a system level and on the top 30-40 persons whose actions both caused and reflected…

The Ministry of Education in the state of Victoria, Australia, prepared six papers outlining new educational policies in the early 1980s. To encourage local implementation of the recommendations contained in the sixth paper, "Curriculum Development and Planning in Victoria," the ministry's Curriculum Branch is writing 10 "curriculum…

The Office of Instructional Resources of the University of Illinois-Urbana/Champaign is described in relation to the suprasystem encompassing the state legislature, the board of trustees, parent and alumni groups, and state and federal agencies. The system consists of campus administration, colleges, academic departments, research units, and other…

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…