This Brief Report highlights current activities focused on setting standards in education, and examines whether students with disabilities are considered when standards are set. Types of standards are distinguished, including performance standards, delivery standards, and content standards. Information on organizations developing standards in…

This document contains transcriptions of testimony and prepared statements on national technology policy with a focus on President Clinton and Vice President Gore's initiatives to support the development of a national information infrastructure. On the first day of the hearing testimony was received from Edward H. Salmon, Chairman, New Jersey…

To provide policymakers, practitioners, and other education leaders with the knowledge needed to consider the issues surrounding charter schools, a survey of these schools is offered. The text opens with an overview of charter-school basics, including the types of schools that are permissible and the legal status of charter schools. It analyzes…

This paper rebuts four common assumptions underlying criticisms of higher education policy scholarship and policy making. The first assumption, policymakers agree on the nature of policy problems and therefore on the kinds of research needed, is rebutted by noting that actually, there is no way to identify and research all possible future policy…

If schools are to play the role of integrators of human services, state and local policymakers must create a favorable policy context in which schools may operate. Six critical policy issues are discussed: ensuring comprehensive service delivery to children and families; developing alternative funding strategies; ensuring family support; ensuring…

Policies and procedures for developing a successful school volunteer program within Catholic schools are presented in this booklet. Chapter 1 describes the philosophy of a volunteer support program, which stresses the importance of volunteer involvement for developing schools as functional communities. Chapter 2 presents reasons why volunteers are…

Findings of a literature review of school policies and procedures for school-based responses to death-related crises are presented in this paper. A rationale and guidelines for policy development and examples of practices for dealing with death-related incidents--such as suicide, homicide, drug overdose, and accidents--are described. Following an…

This paper explores the promise and limitations of evaluation in teacher education in the context of reform. The promise of evaluation is to understand the diverse issues and complexities that underlie the processes of reform and to contribute to a more informed policy making. Three themes in teacher education evaluation are considered. These…

A study explored the function of issues management in the decisionmaking process of policy makers and strategic planners as it is practiced in contemporary organizations. A sample of 56 professionals participated in a mail survey. Their accounts of how issues management operated in their organizations were evaluated with the use of descriptive…

Four major changes have occurred in public policy education during the past 5-0 years. First, public policy educators have richer and more complicated discussions about the relative benefits of advocacy and objectivity in policy education. Second, public policy educators and community developers are moving toward a genuine merger of content and…

Standards for public libraries have undergone dramatic changes in the last decade. Traditional standards measured only "inputs," or what the community put into the library in terms of staff, books, funding, etc. However, these standards did not measure the services that the library produced, and, as a result, the Public Libraries…

Crisis management in the schools is discussed in this position paper. These topics are addressed: the origins of crisis intervention in the schools; the effectiveness of the crisis team approach; establishment of the crisis team; primary components of existing crisis intervention plans; and the role of the school counselor in crisis intervention.…

The study sought to design a strategic planning model to be utilized in the Student Development Department at Winnipeg Bible College in Otterbourne, Manitoba. The objective of the project was to assimilate all processes of departmental planning into one comprehensive, systematic construct. Procedures involved: the collection and categorization of…

This is a workshop training manual designed to help higher education institutional teams develop policies and programs aimed at preventing the abuse of alcohol and use of illegal drugs on their campuses. Three circular diagrams display the community groups that can be involved in drug abuse prevention, higher education institutions that play a…

A policy system design that can benefit from the dynamics of small group behavior without suffering from the adverse effects associated with group thinking, in which the members of small groups acquire a concurrence seeking tendency, is comprised of three subsystem functions: (1) a sub-system normative function which requires that small groups be…