With college and career readiness driving K-12 education goals in the United States today, states are focusing more acutely on policies to ensure their students are well prepared for postsecondary and professional success. While states may adapt their education policies in pursuit of these goals, a question about implementation at the local level…

Based on a fall 2017 survey of officials from 45 state education agencies, this report highlights early state efforts to implement the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). The report highlights states' views on ESSA's shift in control from the federal government to states and school districts regarding accountability and school improvement…

The evolution of the federal role in education policy has entailed increasing activism in matters traditionally controlled by states and school districts. However, the expanding federal role has not resulted in a zero sum game for states and localities. Focusing on the policy-implementation process, this article examines recent state and local…

The federal School Improvement Grants (SIG) program, to which $3 billion were allocated under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA), supports schools attempting to turn around a history of low performance. School turnaround also is a focus of Race to the Top (RTT), another ARRA-supported initiative, which involved a roughly $4…

This article presents the evaluation findings of an education policy initiative that involved the employment of facilitators to broker the policy and its implementation. An Australian state's education authority piloted the employment of physical activity facilitators to expedite the implementation of "Smart Moves" in schools, a…

The purpose of this study was to evaluate decision making in the Common Core State Standards Initiative as the change process moved from research, development and diffusion activities to adoption of the Common Core State Standards by the states. A decision-oriented evaluation model was used to describe the four stages of planning, structuring,…

Supplemental educational services (SES) is a component of the omnibus Elementary and Secondary Education Act usually referred to as the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) of 2001. The law authorizes many programs besides SES, most notably Title I grants targeted to meet the needs of children in high poverty schools. As defined in the non-regulatory…

Sketches the Ohio Department of Education strategy for making effective schools, that is, by defining school effectiveness and by citing the general factors influencing the conduct of effective programs. (JW)

Neither hyperrationalist nor decentralist reform strategies will seriously improve educational quality. Successful reform strategies incorporate three dimensions: the authorized movement, regional or localist responses, and conversation, involving changes in school rhetoric. States must create a context for developing organizational competence at…

New York state established several types of grants to improve local educational practice, and three are examined in this report: Developer grants, Demonstrator grants, and Replicator grants. Policy evaluation performed at the level of a grants administration agency requires many types of data collection and analysis. This study compares the…

Outlines California's major educational reform legislation during 1980's and describes a Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE) study of policy implementations. Results show that nearly all schools correctly implemented key provisions of S.B. 813, that state level reform can be effective when accompanied by cohesive local strategizing,…

Examines systemic reform development from the perspective of local participants in nine states. Implementation varies with local technical capacity. State systemic reform agendas are frequently viewed as incompatible with pressing local issues. The most frequently criticized aspect of systemic reform is apparent lack of connection between state…

In 1984, the Council of State Governments undertook a study to assess states' intentions regarding implementation of the Commission on Excellence in Education's 1983 report "A Nation at Risk." The study described in this report follows up on the findings of the Council's 1984 study, identifying the areas where states have made progress…

Examines the impetus for and impact of a high-stakes assessment plan and reform initiative, North Carolina's ABC Plan for Public Education, from the perspective of state level policymakers and local level implementers. Finds practitioners received little support for implementing the initiative, and an adversarial relationship developed between…

Issues in transforming educational policy into practice are examined in this report, with a focus on the implementation of school-based decision making (SBDM). The importance of understanding change as a process is underscored in the introduction. The first section offers a definition of and the rationale for school-based decision making and…