This book presents the views of teachers, teacher educators, and administrators who write about accountability, testing, and standards programs. The chapters are: (1) "From Policy to Practice: The Research" (Allan A. Glatthorn); (2) "New York's Test-Driven Standards" (Jean Fontana); (3) "Voices from a Native American…

This evaluation provides an overview of demographic characteristics and student achievement outcomes among Wake Country Public School System (WCPSS) elementary schools when these schools are categorized as schools of choice (program magnets and calendar magnets) or traditional schools (nonmagnets). Data were drawn from school-level outcomes…

The Core Data Collection System of the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education is an automated collection system with interactive edits that runs on IBM-compatible microcomputers. The data collected include information about school districts, schools, school programs, and student characteristics and achievement. This manual…

This report builds on information prepared for and presented at the June 2001 meeting of the National Alliance on the American High School (the Alliance). It focuses on one layer of the education system, state policy, which was selected for study because major changes in practice are hard to establish and even harder to sustain when state policies…

Each state is going to set its own education standards, but unless state leaders talk to each other, there are going to be huge unexplained differences in state performance standards for student achievement. What states say they want their students to be taught is quite similar, but they appear to have very different standards for what students…

This report contains the profiles of state-sponsored extended learning initiatives in California, Illinois, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Minnesota, and Texas. They address the need to provide extra time and opportunity for students who have difficulty meeting today's standards, and for students who are meeting standards during the school day, but want…

This study: (1) examined the role of state policies and programs in facilitating and encouraging the use of data in decision-making at the school and district levels across the state of Wyoming; and (2) identifies ways in which the state can increase and improve the use of data-driven decision-making (DDDM) in districts and schools. The study…

Community colleges and baccalaureate and graduate degree granting institutions are active in school-to-career efforts in Colorado in a variety of ways. This document describes some School-to-Career initiatives at Colorado colleges, grouped according to three major educational objectives. The first is to infuse School-to-Career competencies and…

The feature article of this issue discusses state initiatives to address high-risk alcohol and other drug (AOD) use among college and university students. These efforts have focused mainly on networking, information sharing, and professional development. Many are based on the initiative developed by Ohio Parents for Drug Free Youth, an approach to…

Dental disease is one of the most prevalent illnesses facing children in the United States today. Eighty percent of untreated dental disease in permanent teeth is found in roughly 25 percent of 5- to 17-year old children, most of whom come from low-income and other vulnerable populations. The State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP)…

This report assesses hardship among children of immigrants nationwide and in states with large immigrant populations (California, Colorado, Florida, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Texas, and Washington). Data from the 1999 National Survey of America's Families show that hardship is greater for children of immigrants than for the children of…

This document reports on Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) subgrant projects in Michigan for fiscal year (FY) 1998. The introductory section includes: a description of AccessMichigan, the umbrella online service that includes a collection of more than 67 commercial databases, the SPAN (Serials, Periodicals and Newspapers) service, and the…

This study examined the enrollment process for the State Childrens Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) and the outcomes of that process. Data were collected during spring and summer of 2000 through telephone interviews with state program officials from eight states selected based on a variety of demographic and programmatic variables; the states were…

There are lessons to be learned from the reform initiatives that states, school districts, and schools have undertaken to date. To investigate these lessons, a collaborative 3-phase study was undertaken in 1998-2000 by a group of researchers associated with the 10 regional educational laboratories funded by the U.S. Department of Education. In the…

Noting that resurgence of the "orphanage" controversy has recently brought public attention to the child welfare system in Minnesota, this report notes that the child welfare system is not well understood and focuses debate on the needs of children who cannot live at home. Following introductory remarks and highlights from the text, the…