Since Federal regulations have given states the option to implement alternate assessments based on modified academic achievement standards (AA-MAS) as part of their accountability systems for a small group of students with disabilities, a number of states have made decisions about whether or not to develop and implement such an assessment.…

This report looks at the early efforts of states to implement the elementary and secondary education provisions of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. The findings are drawn from a survey of officials in state education agencies and governors' offices in 44 states and the District of Columbia. Key findings concern the financial…

In 2005, all 50 state governors made an unprecedented commitment to voluntarily implement a common, more reliable formula for calculating their states' high school graduation rates by signing the National Governors Association (NGA) Graduation Counts Compact. Four years later, progress is steady. Twenty states now report that they use the Compact…

Educational expectations and demands on the principal have changed markedly over the past few decades, so an updated set of standards or competencies is needed to effectively evaluate school principals today. Increasingly, many states require that administrators qualify for the Interstate School Leaders Licensure Consortium (ISLLC) certification.…

This article examines how the states plan to implement the Programs of Study (POS) that were mandated by the 2006 reauthorization of the federal legislation for career and technical education. A coding system was developed for summarizing the methods described in the plans of all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Guam, and the Virgin Islands.…

This study examined differences in the awareness, use, and perceived impact of educators, employers, and workforce training providers toward skills standards implementation in the State of Illinois. Group differences were revealed on the use of skills standards, with educators displaying significantly higher levels of use than employers or…

In Chapter Five, Alisa Belzer, Cassandra Drennon and Cristine Smith provide an overview of the challenges facing state-level professional development systems. The authors begin the chapter with a brief history of professional development in adult basic education, noting shifts in the funding and priority of professional development in the field.…

As states have become more active in establishing curriculum content standards and related assessments disappointingly little attention has been paid to policy efforts that create learning opportunities for students to meet the new standards. This study examines one state policy designed to bolster the opportunity to learn by mandating additional…

The state-administered grant program authorized under the Adult Education and Family Literacy Act (AEFLA), enacted as Title II of the Workforce Investment Act (WIA) of 1998, is the major source of federal support for adult basic and literacy education programs. The purpose of the program is to provide educational opportunities to adults sixteen…