Briefs

Young Children Face the States: Issues and Options for Early Childhood Programs by W. Norton Grubb is summarized in this policy brief. The report discusses the many decisions state policymakers must make as they seek to respond to needs of today's parents and children. It also describes the historical conflicts that persist within the early childhood movement and the status of early childhood education policy across the country.

This brief examines attempts by states to improve public education by increasing high school course requirements in 1989. According to a report published by the Center for Policy Research in Education, these attempts have had mixed results. As a result of the reforms, low-and middle-achieving students are taking more courses in science and math, but there are serious questions about the quality of the courses themselves. This issue of CPRE Policy Briefs is based on the report which was written with assistance from Paula White and Janice Patterson.

To shed light on these questions, in 1986 the Center for Policy Research in Education (CPRE) began a five-year study of the implementation and effects of state education reforms in six states chosen for their diverse approaches to reform: Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Minnesota, and Pennsylvania.

Some findings from the first three years of this research were published by CPRE in a report, The Progress of Reform: An appraisal of State Education Initiatives, written by William A. Firestone, Susan H. Fuhrman and Michael W. Kirst. In writing the report, the authors relied to a great extent on research conducted by their colleagues on specific reform policies in the six states and others. They also drew from other reports and studies on the status of reform and from structured conversations with national association representatives and reform leaders in other states.

This issue of CPRE Policy Brigs contains material from the report which provides an interim assessment of the 1980s reforms

Retaining students in grade is often used as a means to raise educational standards. Many believe that repeating a grade is an effective remedy for students who have failed to master basic skills. Therefore, grade retention is relatively prevalent in this nation.

However, research on student retention indicates that it does not work as intended to assure mastery of skills, avoid failure at higher grade levels and lower dropout rates. This issue of CPRE Policy Briefs is based on material in a recently published book, Flunking Grades: Research and Policies on Retention (London: Falmer, 1989). The book's editors, Lorrie A. Shepard and Mary Lee Smith, address a series of questions abut the practice of grade retention and the research evidence.

This brief focuses on design issues surrounding policies aimed at decentralization, drawing from three CPRE reports - Working Models of Choice in Public Education, Richard Elmore; Diversity Amidst Standardization: State differential Treatment of Districts, Susan Fuhrman; and School District Restructuring in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Martin Carnoy and Jean McDonnell.

Across the nation, states and school districts are exploring different ways to give schools more autonomy. Proponents of decentralization point to research finds that link school effectiveness to school-level discretion and examples of corporate restructuring where decentralized and simplified administration has increased efficiency. The decentralization movement has also gained momentum from the argument that those who are ultimately responsible for the success of teaching and learning-- teachers, students and parents--need to participate in key school-level decisions about instruction.

This brief summarizes Systemic School Reform by Marshal S. Smith and Jennifer O'Day, which appears in full in The Politics of Curriculum and Testing, edited by Susan Fuhrman and Betty Malen (Falmer 1991).

"Systemic School Reform" is an analytic essay which draws on research conducted by CPRE and others about the effectiveness of current education policies. The author also looked at developing policy systems in a number of states. Smith and O'Day propose a design for a systemic state structure that supports school-site efforts to improve classroom instruction and learning. The structure would be based on clear and challenging standards for student learning; policy components would be tied to the standards and reinforce one another in providing guidance to schools and teachers about instruction.

This brief highlights findings from "Educational Equality: 1966 and Now" by Marshall S. Smith and Jennifer O'Day, which observes that there is evidence of considerable progress toward the goal of equality of educational outcomes; gaps in achievement between African American and white students, and to a lesser extent between income groups, have been substantially reduced.

In order to broaden discussion about higher education finance, this policy brief outlines a proposal for a major change in federal financial aid, state tuition, and state financial aid policies. The proposal is drawn from the book Keeping College Affordable: Government and Educational Opportunity by Michael S. McPherson and Morton Owen Schapiro.

For the past several years, researchers at the Consortium for Policy Research in Education (CPRE) have been examining state regulation of districts and schools. This policy brief summarizes the highlights of CPRE's analyses and research. It is based primarily on four state case studies of different approaches to regulatory treatment. It also draws from other research on state policy and state-local relations.

This issue of CPRE Finance Briefs draws from a study conducted by Massy and Wilfer for the Finance Center of the Consortium for Policy Research in Education. The study examines how post secondary academic departments work in order to identify organizational incentives that can improve productivity.

This issue of CPRE Finance Briefs offers a new definition of school-based management and describes strategies for decentralizing management to improve the design of SBM plans. The design strategies focus on the four components of control: power, knowledge, information, and rewards.

Research on the private sector shows large-scale change, such as decentralization, cannot be simply installed. Rather it unfolds over time through a gradual learning process. Therefore, the transition to SBM is best approached by establishing structures and processes that enable groups of people to discuss new directions, try new approaches, and learn from them. The second part of this finance brief offers strategies for managing the change to school-based management.

This issue of CPRE Finance Briefs evaluates the statues of seven fundamental problems of school finance litigation and reform, presents the three-part remedy, justifies the remedy as good policy, and concludes with a look ahead to the emerging concept of "program equity."

Education leaders at every level of the system are developing standards to specify what students should know and be able to do in key subject areas. Local and state groups, professional organizations, and consortia of states and districts are constructing standards. This brief outlines some lessons suggested by past and current efforts to develop ambitious standards. It draws on studies by CPRE researchers of standards-setting processes in five states: Vermont, Kentucky, New York, California, and South Carolina; and three national curriculum standards projects.

This issue of CPRE Policy Briefs contains excerpts from Little's article, "Teacher Professional Development in a Climate of Educational Reform." The brief addresses the problem of "fit" between current state and local reforms and prevailing approaches to professional development. The first section summarizes the major themes of reform; the second focuses on the policy dilemma these reforms present for professional development; the third describes emerging alternatives to traditional professional development' and the final section suggests principles to guide the design of professional development opportunities.

This brief presents some initial observations about the Statewide Systemic Initiatives based on the first two years of an evaluation study, and discusses some of the issues state and local leaders faced as they attempted to transform science, mathematics, and technology education (1994).