After twenty years of expanding school-choice options, state leaders, educators, and families have a new tool: course choice, a strategy for students to learn from unconventional providers that might range from top-tier universities or innovative community colleges to local employers, labs, or hospitals. In "Expanding the Education Universe:…

This policy brief reviews developments in standards-based reform and explores new ways for holding schools and districts accountable for discharging their missions. It draws on several Consortium for Policy Research in Education (CPRE) studies of accountability, many of which are still in progress. The report examines characteristics of new…

The only way to improve schools is to ensure that faculties judge local work using authentic standards and measures. Concrete benchmarks are needed that obviate both eccentric teacher grading and simplistic standardized testing. A school has standards when it adopts high, consistent expectations of all learners in all courses. Includes 11…

Suggests a legally grounded process for determining adequate performance standards while posing the fewest legal and logistical problems for schools. Addresses issues of accountability, promotion and retention, teachers' concerns, student/parent concerns, and relevant legal issues in developing and implementing appropriate standards. Various types…

This book provokes a re-examination of how expert knowledge, not practitioner know-how, has come to dominate how Americans judge and improve schools. It depicts the English tradition of school inspection to provoke the invention of better ways for judging and knowing schools in America. Data were gathered by observation of 39 local and national…

This paper provides a synthesis of the literature on the role of benchmarking, with a focus on its use in the public sector. Benchmarking is discussed in the context of quality systems, of which it is an important component. The paper describes the basic types of benchmarking, pertinent research about its application in the public sector, the…

Schools are not what they used to be because our society is not what it used to be. The articles appearing here discuss ways that schools can supply future societal need. The articles include: (1) "The Educational Quality Improvement Process Model" (David G. Burgess); (2) "Total Quality Management: How It Works in Schools"…