In this study, we examine how the standardizing effects of federal and state education policies in the United States reflect particular ways of understanding the structure and function of education and schooling. This understanding impacts how policies affect schools and those who work and depend upon them. We argue that the disparity between how…

Guidelines for implementing a plan to integrate an HIV positive child into the educational mainstream are offered in this paper. Although the issue involves a special health problem, the action plan is applicable to any controversial integration project. Components of the plan include working with parents and students, curriculum development,…

School districts often find themselves in a double bind when dealing with the public: they seek public input, but also are vulnerable to manipulation by organized interest groups that are not representative of the entire community. The dilemma is how to procure the overall community's public judgment of a topic and allow widespread participation.…

The rationale for conducting a community survey to obtain information on a specific problem or issue for local school board policy formation is illustrated in this case study. A survey mailed to 10 percent of all district households in a small midwestern city yielded a 31 percent response rate. Survey analysis was utilized by the school board to…

This paper analyzes the potential of a specific public policy tool to further principles of programs devoted exclusively to the Integration of Education and Human Services (IEHS). Section 1 describes the nature of the problem in establishing the need for IEHS. Section 2 describes policy tools currently used to implement IEHS, introducing the…

During the late 1980s and the early 1990s, the "New Religious Right" increasingly exerted influence on the development and implementation of educational policies and programs in the United States, particularly at the local level. The movement will probably continue to directly and indirectly affect several important school activities in…

This paper summarizes the results of a study of the local consequences of implementing statewide minimum competency tests. For American education to be the best in the world, the use of statewide and nationwide standardized testing as a primary policy tool for stimulating reform must be discontinued. Second, school district responses to such…

Using a feminist perspective, this paper attempts to quantify the position of women in educational policymaking in Britain in this century at national and local levels. Women have been in the minority and have not generally been a "shrieking sisterhood," guided primarily by feminist principles. (SLD)

This historiographical case study of the Scottsdale School District in Arizona examined the degree to which school governance was democratic and tested the proposition that policy change at the district level occurs in response to community demands as evidenced by policymakers' Chapter 2 addresses three categories of administrative discipline…

Using the 1981 Education Act of England and Wales as a case study, this paper develops a conceptual framework of education legislation as a significant reference point in the process of negotiation and bargaining that initiates legislation and continues throughout the period of policy implementation. A model of the policy process and the…

Any conclusions that community education concepts are "alive and well" were not supported in a study of the impact of state education policies on rural school districts with total enrollments of 350 students or less in the Great Plains Region (Kansas, Nebraska, Missouri, Colorado, Montana, North Dakota, and South Dakota). Survey…

The 3-part companion volume to the final report of the Education North Evaluation Project serves as a policy development resource book for anyone who must address questions of school-community relations. Part I focuses on the educational issues of concern to policy makers and their advisors in very remote, interracial, poor northern communities.…

One of a series designed to help school arts support groups increase public commitment to their programs, this monograph addresses the concerns of local school boards in instituting or maintaining arts education. Content is divided into 10 sections that cover rationale for arts education, local problems of budgeting and cutbacks, obtaining backing…