True educational reform is the creation of a renewed identity at the school and classroom level when teachers and students interact in new, more productive ways. This article describes California's educational reform movement, presents evidence of successful change, and identifies where continued work needs to be done. (TE)

Describes the cash award system Indiana developed to reward schools for relative improvement in language arts proficiency, mathematics proficiency, overall achievement performance, and attendance. The article looks at problems with the program, how the program was implemented, how money was used, and positive and negative rhetoric. (SM)

Events leading to the passage in 1984 of Arizona's bilingual education law are examined using interviews with policy elite and concepts developed by D. E. Mitchell and others (1985) for studying distinctive cultures of state educational policymaking. Passage of a mandatory or more comprehensive law was not likely. (SLD)

State legislation launched the California Partnership Academies (CPAs) in 1984. Now operating in more than 200 comprehensive high schools, CPAs have been used as a model for high school reform in California and elsewhere. Academies typically feature multi-age learning groups, team teaching and career-based instruction. Teachers help students…

The Oregon Statewide Report Card is an annual publication required by law (ORS 329.115), which reports on the state of public schools and their progress towards the goals of the Oregon Educational Act for the 21st Century. The purpose of the Oregon Report Card is to monitor trends among school districts and Oregon's progress toward achieving the…

This report presents data on the status of state legislation in many areas of education. Data were collected from legislators, legislative staff, state newsletters, "StateNet," school board/teacher associations, and various media. Not all of the listed legislation was enacted. Legislation pertaining to the following topics was included:…

Guidelines are presented to ensure sex equity in the Washington state public schools. A legislative mandate requires the Superintendent of Schools to apply provisions of the sex equity statutes to any activity conducted by or on behalf of a school district. Every year, one third of the state's 296 school districts are required to complete an…

This report discusses the activities of Minnesota's Medical Education and Research Costs (MERC) project, which was undertaken to gather data on the costs of medical education and health care research conducted by hospitals, medical centers, and health maintenance organizations and to develop mechanisms to assess the costs across the health care…

This report examines state-by-state child support data to determine the impact of child support legislation over the last decade. In the text portion, the report compares data provided by the states in fiscal years 1983 and 1992. It finds that while states have made some improvements over the decade, performance in many critical areas has remained…

To fulfill an agreement with the 1992 General Assembly, the Virginia Department of Education conducted a study during the fall and winter of 1992-93 of school divisions' implementation of their Family Life Education (FLE) programs. The program was to provide comprehensive, age-appropriate, and sequential instruction in 10 specified content areas…

Questions and answers on North Carolina's Senate Bill 2, the School Improvement and Accountability Act, are presented in this booklet. General information about governance, assessment, and funding is provided in the first section. The next section explains setting specific student performance targets in the form of performance indicators. The…

This description of the development from 1971 to 1977 of a state documents depository system in Missouri covers: (1) initial planning efforts by Meryl Atterberry (government documents librarian at the Missouri State Library) and the Missouri Library Association (MLA) State Documents Depository Legislation Subcommittee; (2) the distribution of a…

In its evaluation of the effectiveness of employer tax credits (ETCs), the Child Care Action Campaign (CCAC) examined quantitative data and conducted extensive interviews with over 100 public officials, corporate leaders, financial analysts, and child care advocates in the 13 states with established ETC policies. CCAC also interviewed individuals…

In 1988, California voters passed a constitutional ballot initiative, Proposition 98, that required local districts to publish School Accountability Report Cards containing information on specific school characteristics. This study documents some key events leading to the passage of Proposition 98 and the subsequent implementation of the report…

This document reviews three teenage pregnancy prevention strategies which were selected because of their easy access to teenagers and to illustrate the cost of implementation. After a discussion of the high cost of teenage pregnancy, the role of the state legislatures is described. Accessibility and acceptability are cited as two important…