The 1988 Higher Education Reorganization Act established an accountability process for public colleges and universities in Maryland. The law requires the governing boards of these institutions to submit annual performance accountability reports to the Maryland Higher Education Commission. In 1996, the Commission approved a new accountability…

This report evaluates how good a job the states are doing when it comes to putting policies in place that will improve teacher quality. Forty-nine states are included; Oregon and the District of Columbia did not participate in the survey. States receive grades in whether: (1) they hold schools, principals, and teachers accountable for results; (2)…

This report describes the accountability system for the Texas public schools and notes recognition the system has received. Since 1993, the state has had an accountability system for prekindergarten-12 schools. The addition in 1998 of an accountability system for educator preparation makes Texas the first state to create a prekindergarten-grade 16…

Bringing standards, assessment, and accountability from the state down to school districts is not the right way to implement new policies. Standards, assessment, and accountability must be thought of in a holistic way, and the complexity of the issues must be recognized. Educators must welcome the demand and directive that standards be…

The Executive Director of the New Jersey Education Association discusses some of the top priorities facing his organization in the coming years. These include educational quality, accountability and testing, tenure, academic standards, and urban schools. (SJL)

An overview and critique, with special reference to independent schools, of the minimum competency testing movement as a solution to the political and educational furor over declining student achievement. (SJL)

Offers a critical review of eight articles and two journal issues dealing with school indicators of student success or failure; state models for school improvement and accountability; teacher burnout as an outcome of paperwork burdens; the impact of reform efforts; class size; trends in educational evaluation; mastery testing; departmentalization…

This is the first in a series of reports on the educational progress of Texas public schools. It reviews the concerns that led to the development of the integrated accountability system now used in Texas and examines this system relative to those of other states. A major new research and evaluation effort, the Statewide Texas Educational Progress…

If rewards are to be used as a school-reform tool, their formats must be more closely tailored to the organizational characteristics of schools and to the purpose of improving teaching and learning. This paper describes lessons learned from Kentucky's collective incentive system, the Kentucky Instructional Results Information System (KIRIS). The…

Chapter I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) is the largest federally-funded program designed to provide services to elementary and secondary students to meet the special needs of educationally deprived students who reside in areas with high concentrations of low-income families. The 1994-95 school year is the last year of…

The Board on Testing and Assessment of the National Research Council convened a workshop in 1994 to help policymakers and others better understand the complex issues emerging from the standards-based educational reform movement. This bulletin synthesizes the workshop discussions. It is organized around four major themes that emerged from the…

The School-Based Management and Accountability Program, also known as the "ABCs of Public Education," or just "the ABCs," is the statewide school-based accountability program for public schools in North Carolina. This document reports the results of the 1997-98 ABCs, in the second year of the implementation of the ABCs in…

This paper draws on the experience of various states in its discussion of questions, issues, and decisions that policymakers face as they plan their states' family support initiatives. The discussion is organized into three parts that correspond roughly with the stages of policy formation, program development, and program implementation and…

The 1988 report by the Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) entitled "Goals for Education: Challenge 2000" reflects concerns of government and educational leaders in the 15 states of the SREB area (Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee,…

Accountability has been a developing issue for community colleges for the past several years. Demands that two-year colleges provide evidence of the achievement of their goals has placed a heavy burden on institutional research offices. A number of organizational models have been used by community colleges in carrying out the research function,…