As voucher and tax-credit scholarship programs have expanded in recent years, another promising development has been the incorporation, into more such programs, of provisions that hold participating private schools to account for their students' performance. The newest and largest voucher programs, such as those in Louisiana and Indiana, have gone…

This paper examines the impact of vouchers in general and voucher design in particular on public school performance. It argues that all voucher programs are not created equal. There are often fundamental differences in voucher designs that affect public school incentives differently and induce different responses from them. It analyzes two voucher…

A perspective of state assessment, state goal-setting, and state standards adoption is presented. Relationships among these three concepts are noted and the relationship of all three to a system orientation is explored. The recent history of national and state assessment is documented. Attention is given in this historical overview to the manner…

A model is presented for the categorizing of alternative schools, then the nature of the free school, which represents the essence of the alternative school movement, is examined. Strengths and weaknesses of court, legislative, and administrative approaches to resolve governance issues are set forth. This is followed by an analysis of three…

The Milwaukee voucher program, as implemented in 1990, allowed only nonsectarian private schools to participate in the program. However, following a Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling, the program was expanded to include religious private schools in 1998. This second phase of the voucher program led to more than a three-fold increase in the number of…

This paper deals with the inservice education of teachers by first defining the concept and presenting a brief history of inservice education. The prospects for change in inservice education are traced. Wisconsin documents relevant to inservice education are summarized, including the law, the administrative code, a task force report, and a…

Material bearing on the educational and social policy of early childhood education is summarized and a set of policy options and a recommendation are offered. An attempt is made to clarify the questions around which disagreements occur concerning the meaning and value of "education" in relation to young children. A history section treats…

A collection of papers on particular issues commissioned by the chief state school officer in Wisconsin reassesses education--the state of the art and the future direction in general. Issues selected for discussions are those that highlighted the majority of the superintendent's discussions with lay people while campaigning for office and…

The issue addressed is that of developing effective relationships between the schools and the community. The need for community involvement is explicated and the goals of community involvement are outlined. A theoretical basis for community involvement is presented, followed by the presentation of a model of home-school-community relationships.…

The research project described in this paper was conducted for three purposes: (1) to identify the program evaluation needs of secondary vocational educators in Wisconsin; (2) to identify those components of the state's previous evaluation system that educators wanted to keep; and (3) to develop a conceptual framework for revising Wisconsin's…

The concluding chapter of the book looks back at the previous presentations in order to discern additional educational issues that demand definition and delimitation. A basic bidimensional taxonomy is presented that consists of the levels of education and the functions of education. The resulting grid is then used to analyze the contents of the…

Systemic efforts to implement data-based decision making at the school and classroom level face several challenges. First, most data available within district information systems are limited to what has been deemed important for the operational needs of schools and the district. Second, educational organizations have little experience integrating…