Discusses the political and legal issues in minimum competency testing. Indicates that local educational policymakers and administrators must resist further centralization and take action to devise their own programs. (JOW)

Presents arguments against discipline-based state learning standards, including their effects on learning and the limits they impose on teachers' intellectual and moral attentiveness to student development. Makes a case for locally developed standards, including the state's role. (Contains 18 references.) (SK)

The article examines the Buffalo, New York, experiment of community control at the local school level and why it succeeded when other similar experiments failed. (MF)

Suggestions for developing procedures prior to the implementation of local school control plans were discussed. (Author/RK)

Models of educational administration are examined to trace the teacher's sphere of professional autonomy. Models include the pre-industrial model, the industrial model, the welfare-statist model, and the collective bargaining model. The author gives her prognosis for the future of teacher autonomy. (CT)

Critiques the prescriptions and policy implications of the National Science Foundation (NSF) institute on curriculum priorities in the natural and social sciences. Proposes that NSF's withdrawal from the politics of curriculum reform is an abdication of its responsibility to provide national leadership in these fields. (SK)

Reviewing school choice plans, Rinehart considers the only effective plan one in which the government cedes ownership and operation of schools to private sources. Mahlios counters that market-driven approaches to schooling deny access to or unevenly serve many groups. (SK)

An acceptable administrative procedure to resolve issues involving the constitutional rights of students and the authority of school officials should consider (1) whose interests should be represented? (2) who should have final authority? and (3) do the established guidelines have legal and educational merit? (SK)