Reviews research on the effectiveness of supportive leadership, teacher participation in decision making, and staff collaboration. Investigates conditions that promote or impede the implementation of these practices by using a multilevel statistical model. Finds significant variance between public and Catholic schools, as well as within-school…

Uses an economic model of the provision of educational services to evaluate the efficiency of an urban educational system. Concludes that a voucher system would not promote efficiency and would increase racial and social segregation, but minischools and competitive contracting-out might aid the promotion of common social values. (FMW)

Reviews the rationale for the systematic involvement of government agencies in early childhood care and education programs. Discusses barriers to the development of a universal rationale, emphasizing the role of widespread popular and official ambivalence about the role of women outside the home. (FMW)

Argues that American multicultural education as practiced in the 1970s and 1980s, despite its affirmation of pluralism, is similar to intercultural education as practiced in the 1940s, when pluralism was not socially accepted. Suggests that the power of the ideology of individualism sharply limits the realization of pluralism. (FMW)

Reviews "School Matters" by Peter Mortimore, a rigorous longitudinal study of the effects of elementary schools in London. Concludes that school differences influence student development, and explores the connections between school leadership, classroom life, and student cognitive and noncognitive development. (FMW)

Inquires about the moral dimensions of high school students' understanding of two films' representations of the past. The film "Dances with Wolves" was viewed as a transparent window on the 19th-century West, but no moral frame was examined. "The Searchers" was viewed as a deeply flawed product of the 1950s. (GLR)

Expands on research findings about the literacy development of children living in poverty through the use of a large and nationally representative sample of poor and middle-income eighth graders. It explores home and school influences on young adolescents' performance on reading comprehension. (GLR)

Examines the impact of racial climate on the academic self-concept of minority (African American and Chicano) graduate students in the 1970s. It reports that minority females consistently lag behind males in views of academic self-concept and characterizes the graduate-school racial climate as having low trust and little interaction among groups.…

Stresses key areas of political conflict in the certification of a national curricular content and explores trade-offs a national-standards approval group must make. The article analyzes left-wing support for explicit opportunity-to-learn standards and right-wing objections to educational outcomes and focuses on initial approval stages, not…

Explores the policy uses of assessment and focuses particularly on its persuasive role in encouraging higher levels of educational performance and on its accountability and regulatory functions. Policymakers continue to insist that assessments can be used for multiple purposes, in spite of past experience and expert evidence to the contrary. (SLD)

Empirical evidence concerning the promise of setting national standards for school improvement is assembled. From this evidence, it is predicted that standards will not lead to the standardization of educational practice, stifled creativity, or minority-student endangerment. Benefits, which are less easily predicted, will depend on the quality of…

The development of a new national policy on achievement testing and how researchers sought to influence its development are chronicled. This development has been marked by the emergence of assessment advocates and educational researchers as two classes of assessment experts. Their differential effects on educational reform are explored. (SLD)

Explores issues involved in using assessments to define standards and encourage efforts to meet them and compares the European examination system with the American testing system. Also considered are issues of the definition of learning domains in ways that do not encourage narrowly focused training on specific assessment items. (SLD)

Reforms in American schools should concentrate on the development of higher-order skills and on assessments that support them. Reform should move beyond conventional tests that are of little use to students. Applications of cognitive psychology in the real world, including cognitive apprenticeships and interactive learning environments, are…

The most fundamental technical quality issue raised by proposals for a national examination system is that of validity. Types of evidence needed to judge the validity of test use and the interpretation of results are discussed, and examination content, fairness, impact, generalizability, and comparability are explored. (SLD)