This paper presents a summary of the proceedings of a two-day policy forum on performance goals and indicators for special education. The conference was part of a larger project to research and analyze the impacts of accountability-based reforms on students with disabilities and special education. The forum focused on the feasibility and…

In May 2000, the New York State Board of Regents adopted amendments to regulations of the state department of education to implement a System of Accountability for Student Success (SASS) to expand on the program of registration review for schools performing below state standards. SASS aligned institutional accountability with the new state…

The Thomas B. Fordham Foundation recently celebrated the fifth anniversary of the beginning of its modern era in 1997. The Foundation has not made a habit of issuing regular reports on its work, but this opportunity provides the occasion to review what the Fordham Foundation has done. It recaps the major priorities and activities in the national…

Alternate assessments provide a mechanism for students with complex disabilities to be included in assessment systems. An integral part of maximizing the benefits of assessing students is to include the results of alternate assessments in school accountability systems. This report addresses policy options for including the results of alternate…

Education policy should encourage liberty and equality of opportunity, political tolerance, respect for diversity, and citizenship. The authors compare current policy that uses family residence to assign students to schools with alternative policies that range from expanding public choice options to school vouchers. They identify the benefits and…

In the few short years since its passage in 2002, the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) has become the focus of many in education, from state superintendents to researchers to teachers. In this Issues in Education we seek to give the reader a basic introduction to the way in which NCLB and its main measure of success, Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP),…

Ongoing efforts to include social contextual dynamics in research on mathematics education require theoretical frameworks that allow researchers to zoom their focus out to include the social sphere (Lerman, 1998). This is especially important when studying teacher development, as teachers learn in a wide variety of social contexts. Here we…

Over the past decade, the standards-based reform movement in education has focused attention on the responsibility of schools and school systems to produce results in student learning. Nationally this focus is most evident with the implementation of accountability provisions of the federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 2001. However, even…

During the past two years, three independent studies--conducted by Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE), American Institutes for Research (AIR), and the Consortium for Policy Research in Education (CPRE)--have examined the accomplishments, shortcomings, and continuing challenges of California's Public Schools Accountability Act (PSAA).…

This paper examines changes in California's school finance system over the past 35 years. It focuses specifically on the growth of categorical program funding. The study assesses the nature and magnitude of changes, the causes of those changes, the significance of those changes for the capacity of schools to provide high quality educational…

Kentucky, Oklahoma, and Tennessee have given all the Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) states a new tool to help focus their colleges and universities on state needs. These three states have created plans for their higher education institutions by drawing on leadership from a broad range of state agencies. They identified state needs and…

The use of statewide tests of student achievement as one component of accountability are certainly not new. An increasing number of states have mandated statewide testing through legislation aimed at tying financial incentives to a variety of accountability indicators including student achievement. These initiatives have generated several side…

Nearly all the states produce one or more accountability or indicator reports containing data reported at one or more levels of the education system as well as data from other sources. To inform discussion about what data are useful and appropriate to report, comparisons were made of state accountability and indicator reports. A list of 74…

This book is a collection of essays that deal with 10 current controversial issues. The issues are also the topics of 10 recent fastbacks from the Phi Delta Kappa fastback series published between 1993 and 1996. Following the introduction, the articles include the following: (1) "Accountability" (Jack Frymier); (2) "Assessment…

This paper describes a policy exercise on education and the new economy held in Aspen, Colorado, in June 1997. The exercise was designed to help the National Center for Research on Vocational Education understand the development of education and training in the near future. The exercise took advantage of expertise in social gaming developed at…