Susan H. Fuhrman

Understanding Local Control in the Wake of State Education Reform

In this article we argue that traditional notions of state-local relations as a zero-sum game need recasting. Although some new state education reforms are exerting strong influences on the classroom, there are reasons to think that the reforms left not only considerable room for flexibility but also enhanced local activism. New conceptions of state-local relations must account for the ways in which states mobilize public and professional opinion, districts orchestrate state and local priorities around schools and classrooms, and local political entrepreneurs influence state policy. The result is often that the local effects of state policy are greater than those one would predict on the basis of state capacity, and localities often gain influence as a result of state policymaking rather than lose it.

State Educational Reform Since 1983: Appraisal and the Future

More state activity aimed at improving public education took place in the 1980s than ever before. State legislators introduced an unsurpassed number of education-related bills, increased state aid, and examined the findings of hundreds of state-level task forces and commissions. Education initiatives spread quickly from state to state. To shed light on the significance of the reform movement itself, in 1986 the Center for Policy Research in Education (CPRE) began a 5-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. This article pres- ents some of the findings from that research.

The Politics of Curriculum and Testing: introduction and overview

Throughout the past two decades, state governments have assumed a more expansive, aggressive, and prescriptive role in many domains of education policy (Mitchell 1988). Since the mid 1980s, state governments have become especially active in two domains, curriculum and accountability (Elmore et al. 1990, McDonnell and Fuhrman 1986). In this fairly brief time period, nearly all states enacted policies to inspire or require more rigor in the academic component of the school program and nearly all states adopted policies to generate and disseminate more detailed assessments of student performance (Blank, this volume).

Recent Research on Education Reform

This special section is devoted to research on education reform. Five articles highlight emerging themes in education policy, governance, and finance, drawing on 5 years of research conducted by the Consortium for Policy Research in Education (CPRE) and on related research in the field. Individually, and as a group, the articles speak to the complexity of education reform. Policy research has long demonstrated that reform is not simply a matter of getting the policy right; influences ranging from the political, social, and economic culture to the norms and knowledge structures of educators affect teaching and learning. Part of the challenge for reformers is understanding the limits of policy as well as its comparative advantage in leveraging changes in other domains, such as organization, management, and institutional and individual capacity. These articles help to sort through the role of education and finance policy in encouraging improvement and suggest ways of thinking about the contribution of policy to the range of factors influencing practice and performance.