Contributors to this collection examine how today's federal education programs work and show how, instead of working for school improvement, these programs have begun to function as obstacles to the efforts of reform-minded states and schools. The following essays are included: (1) "Overview: Thirty-Four Years of Dashed Hopes" (Chester…

This paper examines the genesis of Arizona's charter school law and discusses the key features of that law. Drawing on published sources and interviews conducted from November 1997 to March 2000 with 46 Arizona educators and policymakers, the paper details the conditions that prompted the broad push for charter schools. The text describes the…

Federal intent is conveyed to states and localities through a series of actions that include authorizing legislation, legislative history, formal legal framework, administrative decisions, and congressional oversight. Program implementation, in turn, requires states and localities to modify organizational structures, processes, and behavior.…

Presents preliminary evaluation findings from Florida's Juvenile Justice Educational Enhancement Program that explore the relationships between educational program quality and program characteristics. Several program characteristics are found to be related to measurements of educational program quality, including proportion of teachers who are…

The article provides an historical overview of events which led to establishing a Commission on Education of the Deaf as well as the Commission's 40 recommendations which emphasized improved quality while reducing costs through competition. Events in the deaf community indicate implementation of initiatives is still awaited. (Author/DB)

Investigates three policy issues in two school districts: classification of students for various educational services; the impact of these practices on reading instruction; and implications of the classification-reading relationship for providing quality education for all students. Finds that broad discretion in program implementation adversely…

To increase understanding of the educational reform movement, the Center for Policy Research in Education (CPRE) embarked on a five-year study of the implementation and effects of state education reforms in six states (Arizona, California, Florida, Minnesota, and Pennsylvania) with diverse reform approaches. This article presents the center's…

Strategies used at several medical schools to address common issues in ambulatory care clerkship programs are presented. These include institutional and policy concerns (institutional resistance, financing, faculty incentives), administrative and implementation problems (logistics, faculty recruitment, student recruitment/placement), and…

Education leaders throughout California are playing a key role in creating healthy school environments for the 6 million students in the state's public schools. Recognizing the strong connection between health and learning, they have made significant changes to the nutrition environment in their schools. This article looks at how these…

This study extends previous work on survey validity and reliability by examining how different groups of respondents vary in their answers to survey questions about the policy system. The study uses state-representative data from a five-state study of standard-based reform in mathematics to test how predictive teacher, principal, and district…

Purpose: To explore some of the factors that could obstruct the implementation of the sustainability initiatives in higher education institutions as a way for assisting key players to improve the effectiveness of their potential or current sustainability initiatives and being ready for the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable…

To give states the information they need to sustain hard-fought education reform effectively, Achieve conducted research on state education reforms that have been sustained successfully for over a decade or more. Funded by the GE Foundation, Achieve hopes this work will help other state leaders, wherever they may be on their road to reform,…

Pay for performance is a popular public education reform, and millions of dollars are currently being targeted for pay for performance programs. These reforms are popular because economic and management theories suggest that well-designed incentive pay programs could improve teacher effectiveness. There is little evidence about the characteristics…

The concept of treatment integrity cuts across a diversity of fields involved with providing treatments or interventions to individuals. In medical treatments, the concept of "treatment compliance" or "treatment adherence" is an important and problematic issue. In the field of nutrition, the concept of "dietary adherence" is important for…

The goal of this report is to describe the implementation of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act in school districts and schools with large enrollments of English language learners (ELLs) and immigrant students. The study, drawing from previous research on the demographic characteristics of pre-K-5th grade students and of schools with high limited…