This document provides a summary of legislative actions and issues in the member states of the Southern Regional Education Board (SREB). The economic slowdown continued to dominate legislative deliberations of state budgets, with midyear cuts the norm rather than the exception. It is expected that 2002-2003 will be another tight year, with…

This report summarizes data collected from all responding departments with school construction facilities budget responsibility in 49 of the 50 sates (Wyoming excluded). Each of the 49 states was asked to participate in the update of the survey, which was last compiled in 1999. Data are presented in two formats. The first is broken into categories…

The competency testing of teacher candidates has become almost universal in the United States. This paper explores some of the issues associated with competency testing, especially as they relate to teacher testing in California. The practice has its origin in concern that some of those who choose to pursue teaching careers in the elementary and…

This paper focuses on interpreting the major conceptual features of California's Academic Performance Index (API) as a coherent set of statistical procedures. To facilitate a characterization of its statistical properties, the paper casts the index as a simple weighted average of the subjective worth of students' normative performance and presents…

This guide provides parents of children with special needs information on opportunities to develop and apply leadership skills in Colorado. Introductory material considers the nature of parent leadership, the various roles of parent leaders, and ways to learn leadership skills. The next section describes specific parent leadership opportunities at…

The increased use of large-scale assessments to measure student achievement and school performance based on defined standards has had a profound impact on state board of education members and other state policymakers. Almost any decision that involves applying standards will, at some point, be unpopular. Everyone seems to be in favor of standards,…

This paper discusses recession and the major policy considerations that states and institutions must face in the current economic downturn. It explores the public policy implications of three major variables: (1) each of the 50 states has a unique higher education system; (2) each state also has a unique revenue and budgetary process; and (3) each…

This document is designed to show the connection between the required state-written curriculum (courses of study) and the state-tested curriculum (the Alabama High School Graduation Examination and the Stanford Achievement Test, Ninth Edition [Stanford 9]) in Mathematics. The document illustrates that courses of study content standards embody both…

This report outlines the major themes of the 2000 annual conference of the Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing (CRESST), which focused on educational accountability in the 21st century. The conference opened with a panel presentation on the Texas accountability system. This session included a presentation by one of…

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 guide contains materials to help Delaware educators understand and use the reports from the Delaware Student Testing Program (DSTP). The tests of the DSTP are tied to the Delaware content standards that define the knowledge and skills required for Delaware students to succeed beyond high school. In spring 2002, the annual administration of…

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…

This study examined two major questions: do national and state assessments provide consistent information on the performance of state education systems, and what accounts for discrepancies between national and state assessment results if they are found? Data came from national and state assessments in grade 4 and grade 8 mathematics from 1992 to…