"Harvard Education Letter" is published bimonthly at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. This issue of "Harvard Education Letter" contains the following articles: (1) Online Testing, Version 1.0: Oregon's Adaptive Computer-Based Accountability Test Offers a Peek at a Brave New Future (Robert Rothman); (2) Beyond…

The tension at the heart of pension politics is the incentive to address today's claimants and focus on the here-and-now at the expense of long-term concerns and more dispersed constituencies. In the private sector, rules and regulations seek to tame corner-cutting and short-sighted behavior. In the public sector, the primary safeguard is the…

According to Joe A. Stone of the University of Oregon, average students do better in classrooms with unionized teachers, but less able and more able students do not. While this particular assumption lacks empirical clarity, many administrators and school board members feel that it would be much easier to reform public education if teacher unions…

A bargaining process, begun over 10 years ago, is based on problem-solving rather than on adversarial confrontation and uses elements of participative management. It has resulted in outstanding benefits for two school districts. Called "Theory Z bargaining," the process follows a procedure based on each side treating the other with…

Three basic issues examined in this research include why superintendents are disturbed about teacher militancy; whether superintendents view teacher militancy as threatening to local decisionmaking, damaging to public support of education, adversely affecting professionalism, causing severe role conflict for administrators, driving out…

SIX RECENT BOOKS ON COLLECTIVE NEGOTIATIONS ARE REVIEWED--(1) MYRON LIEBERMAN AND MICHAEL H. MOSKOW, "COLLECTIVE NEGOTIATIONS FOR TEACHERS, AN APPROACH TO SCHOOL ADMINISTRATION," (2) MICHAEL H. MOSKOW, "TEACHERS AND UNIONS, THE APPLICABILITY OF COLLECTIVE BARGAINING TO PUBLIC EDUCATION," (3) STANLEY M. ELAM, MYRON LIEBERMAN,…

This conference report on militancy in education contains papers presented by experts in collective negotiations and seeks to present a balanced point of view of collective negotiations by involving teacher organization representatives, school administrators, school board members, and university faculty members. Topics covered include problems in…

The decade of the 1960's witnessed an ever-increasing demand by members of the teaching profession for a greater voice in the determination of policies affecting the educational system. Teachers pressed for a more active role in what previously had been considered an administrative function. For this investigation of Oregon educator attitudes…

In 1973, the Oregon legislature transferred from the State Board of Education to the Teacher Standards and Practices Commission full legal authority over teacher certification and decertification and over the accreditation of teacher education programs. With this move, governance of the educational profession was removed from the control of laymen…