Cedar Lakes Craft Center in West Virginia is helping students learn new design, production, and marketing techniques. The year-round program at a state camp and conference center offers weekend and week-long workshops in arts and crafts for the professional artist and the hobbyist. (JOW)

Educators from Fullerton Union High School District, Newport-Mesa Unified School District, Capistrano Unified School District, and Huntington Beach Union High School District describe their efforts toward developing competency-based curriculum to meet state mandates. (SJL)

In its firm commitment to competency-based vocational education, Kentucky has gone beyond its V-TECS catalogs to develop modules that will give teachers almost complete flexibility in individualized instruction. Implementation of the model is fully described. (HD)

Describes a model code that attempts to reshape education through legislation at the state level. (Author/IRT)

Discusses a plan to evaluate student performance in the public schools of Mississippi. The plan is concerned with needs, goals and priorities, objectives, implementation, and evaluation. (Author/IRT)

The South Carolina model for needs assessment examines national, state, perceptual, and system indicators and contains a section for updating. (IRT)

In South Carolina, service learning is located in the state Office of Community Education. The community education state plan includes strategies for infusing service learning into community education. The state association, universities, and adult education programs are involved in service learning initiatives. (SK)

The Tri-State Initiative is a collaboration for service learning linking the Iowa Department of Education; Minnesota Department of Children, Families, and Learning; and the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction. Six demonstration schools are restructuring using service learning methodology. (SK)

Whenever performance assessment has been introduced into statewide testing programs, various potentially paralyzing difficulties have been encountered surrounding test accuracy, reliability, validity, or suitability. Programs in some states have been discontinued or placed in jeopardy. It is uncertain whether educators can overcome these problems…

Higher education's presence in school reform is limited because many university people equate reform with lowered standards and instrumental knowledge, view portfolios as complicating the admissions process, and have low expectations for the secondary school system. Oregon's Proficiency-based Admission Standards System (PASS) is a state-mandated…

Studied how 25 New York school districts that applied for funding for corrective actions against low performing schools planned to take action. Also examined the extent to which school choice could be implemented in these districts. Overall, districts seemed unable to implement school choice effectively and did not describe effective corrective…

Compared the willingness of states to invest in higher education and institutional sectors by studying state expenditures and fiscal tax effort. Findings show significant disparities in the ways states finance higher education and its sectors. Poorer states tend to exert more tax effort in public higher education, while wealthier states are less…

As states struggle to close deficits, direct taxpayer support to private colleges and student aid programs are in jeopardy in many states. Provides examples of reductions in state funds to private colleges and discusses the likelihood that increases in student grants will not make up the difference for private colleges. (SLD)

Reports the results of a survey conducted shortly after the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, through its U.S. Library Program, awarded a statewide grant of computers and software to public libraries in Louisiana, to gather data about the grant's impact on library staff. A copy of the survey is appended. (Author/LRW)

Studied 18 states with high-stakes testing to see if their programs were affecting student learning, analyzing results from additional tests covering some of the same domain as each state's own test. Findings suggest that in all but one case, student learning is indeterminate, remains at the same level, or actually decreases with the…