Planning staff development programs to meet changing state education agency (SEA) needs can best be undertaken by considering first what the SEA is trying to accomplish. If we look at the priorities and emphases given by the SEA to its various managerial, service, and leadership tasks, concepts of agency role and mission begin to emerge. By…

State education agencies (SEA's) must determine the policies most appropriate for the realization at the state level of the high priority placed on international education by the new U.S. Department of Education. The extent of international education (whether involving the study of different cultures, of foreign languages, of nations and…

This paper poses and responds to 10 questions about the policy issues affecting state education agencies raised by the federal government's plans to reduce expenditures for education and to consolidate several categorical aid programs into two major block grants. These 10 questions focus on the shifting relationships among and responsibilities of…

Part of a series on the legal and governmental foundations governing education of handicapped and gifted children, the document explores the local variables that uniquely affect the cost of educating handicapped children and which thereby should be considered when developing state special education fiscal policies. An initial section outlines…

The Kentucky Dropout Prevention Advisory Commission, appointed in 1984, found enough evidence to conclude that Kentucky's dropout problem is large enough to nerit the development of statewide dropout prevention efforts. Any such effort, the Commission states, will require a commitment from all Kentucky officials, educators, and citizens to educate…

State departments of education are engrossed in matters relating to instruction, school law, teacher certification, pensions, statistics and reports, supervision, and transportation. The best available information suggests that future federal funding will be dependent on State departments overhauling and measurably improving their planning and…

This chapter explores the extent of differences among the 50 states in their degree of centralized state control over local school policy, and then further searches for regional variations in the degree of educational policy centralization throughout the United States. Most of the chapter presents and discusses data from a massive content analysis…

This paper reviews previous research on school finance reform in Illinois and examines the impact of various types of finance reform on suburban school districts as compared to urban and rural districts. The paper is divided into two parts. Part 1 reviews data from three previous annual evaluations of the results of the Illinois school finance…

Decentralized control of New York City elementary and junior high schools was instituted in 1969. Subsequent financial crises in the city transferred governance functions from school officials to the Emergency Financial Control Board. A comparison of school board members in poor city districts, middle-class city districts, and suburban districts…

Discusses different systems of allocating educational revenue and examines their impact on educational administration at the state, district, and school levels. Four allocation systems are considered in light of recent demands for more equitable school finance systems. Part two of article in Vol. 15, No. 3. (JG)

Data collected by the Appalachia Educational Laboratory (AEL) in its 1980 Needs Assessment Project was reduced to eight marker variables for use in subsequent individual state factor analyses. These variables concern (1) high need family situations; (2) effective career education/guidance; (3) increased school capacity for working with families;…

Staff of the Michigan Educational Assessment Program (MEAP) have developed procedures for helping school district and building staffs use and report assessment results. There are procedures for using results at the district level, school building level and classroom level included in the appendix. This model is applicable to other state programs…

During the spring of 1980, Texas tested all of its ninth graders for the first time as part of a legislatively-mandated competency program. This forced all Texas districts which already had established programs to decide whether to drop, modify, or retain them. The political, economic, and practical information which was important within the…

The Kentucky Department of Education has a responsibility to provide technical assistance and consultative services to local school districts. Descriptions of the state selected diagnostic reading test, the Prescriptive Reading Inventory (PRI) and the diagnostic math test, the Diagnostic Math Inventory (DMI), are explained. Each school district in…