This bulletin describes types of prepayment and savings plans for financing college education, outlines advantages and disadvantages of these programs, and highlights issues that state and institutional planners and policymakers should consider. A description of existing tuition prepayment plans looks at state plans that typically permit investors…

A conference is reported in which experiential education practitioners addressed the utility and acceptability of the policy guidelines for work oriented experiential education developed by a national advisory panel of management, labor, education, and community representatives. The first part of the report contains the full text of the five…

In 1995, the Council for Basic Education initiated the Standards for Excellence in Education (SEE) project, a multiyear effort to provide parents, educators, and the general public with better means to use standards to improve public education. This issue of "Perspective" tries to provide a coherent way to think about issues and…

The five articles of this sourcebook, organized around the five-component framework for evaluation described by W. Shadish, T. Cook, and L. Leviton (1991), present a new theory of realist evaluation that captures the sensemaking contributions of postpositivism and the sensitivity to values from the constructivist traditions. (SLD)

Since colonial times, definitions and estimates of illiteracy in the United States have been debated. The Census Bureau's major indicator is number of years of schooling completed. However, average grade-level attainment is high, whereas estimates of levels of reading ability remain low. In addition, these measures are inadequate for adults. A…

Today, farming claims fewer members in the U.S. work force, and its share of the gross national product has substantially decreased. Yet farming remains important to the economy because of its links to a variety of industries. Extensive use of financial inputs has made farmers more vulnerable to fluctuations in the general economy, rising costs,…

This bulletin focuses on the views of four authors. The first, Daniel R. Davies, describes the rise and fall of local control and local school board policies and predicts how the vacuum will be filled. Specifically, he analyzes the concomitant waning of local control and school board policymaking power and forecasts stages in the transition from…

On June 5, 1989, the Council of Ministers for Employment and Social Affairs of the European Economic Community passed a detailed and comprehensive Resolution on continuing vocational training in Europe. Some of the possible consequences of the resolution are the following: (1) the prospects for the implementation of the Resolution are highly…

Presented are 36 articles originally published in "Science" during 1973-75. The articles are divided into six sections entitled: (1) Policy Considerations; (2) Energy, Environment and Conservation; (3) Perspectives on Needs and Supplies of Resources; (4) Finding the Processing Minerals; (5) High Technology Materials; and (6) Wood and Plant…

The six chapters of this theme issue attempt to define conceptual and methodological issues in the evaluation of integrated services systems and to begin to synthesize some of these issues. An introduction to these evaluation issues is followed by case studies and a discussion of implications for program and policy development. (SLD)

A discussion of public policy concerning bilingual education looks at why and how policy should be re-focused on helping Limited English Proficient (LEP) students make academic gains. It first examines some characteristics of the highly diverse and rapidly growing LEP population, including varied academic background, tendency to reside in small…

For more than a year the 2.3 million member National Education Association (NEA) and the 900,000 member American Federation of Teachers (AFT) engaged in merger negotiations. The plan was to bring American teachers together in one union for collective bargaining, political action, and education policy. This report gives a detailed picture of the…

The role of state and local policymakers in creating an environment conducive to cooperation between schools and human services agencies is discussed in this educational policy bulletin. To ensure effective service delivery programs and enabling policies, policymakers must consider: (1) the qualities of collaborative service delivery programs,…

The view that peer review and faculty self-government are detrimental is expressed. Peer review, a procedure in which the conduct of faculty members is subject to review by other faculty members, is used primarily in personnel and research decisions (e.g., tenure, promotion, and/or salary increases, and to assess grant or contract proposals).…

The fictive account of a school board's problems with a new policy illustrates the need to involve all affected groups in the policy-making process. The "Sleepy Hollow Board of Education" early in the school year adopts a policy discontinuing social promotions of academically unqualified students. After a year of pressure and protest…