Policy Design, Analysis, and Evaluation Commons^™

Economic Growth Issues In Massachusetts Rural Areas And Small Cities, Nancy Goff

New England Journal of Public Policy

In developing a strategy for economic development, state government must consider the special needs of its small cities and rural areas. Well-meaning policies crafted for metropolitan areas have unintended and often negative consequences when applied statewide. This article is a revision of the author's topical discussion paper for the August 6, 1992, Conference on Rural and Small City Development at Mount Wachusett Community College, Gardner. It was used by the Massachusetts Executive Office of Economic Affairs and the University of Massachusetts in developing a statewide economic development strategy.

The Changing Nature Of Universities, Ernest A. Lynton

New England Journal of Public Policy

Excessive emphasis on research as the dominant measure of institutional as well as individual prestige and values has created a critical mismatch between the activities of American universities and societal expectations. This article traces the origins of the resulting crisis of purpose to the post-World War II surge in federal research support and articulates the urgent need for basic changes in university priorities at a time teaching and professional services have acquired both new importance and new complexity. It further describes current efforts toward a more balanced view of the components of university missions and a resulting shift in faculty …

Service Learning: The Promise And The Risk, Alice L. Halsted, Joan C. Schine

New England Journal of Public Policy

Service learning, the pairing of meaningful work in the community and structured reflection, has the potential to transform schools. It provides opportunities for young people to test new roles, develop skills, apply academic learning in a "real world" setting, and move toward responsible citizenship. Service learning can reinvigorate traditional classrooms and turn passive students into dynamic and engaged learners. However, unless it is implemented with care, with a solid rationale and clearly articulated learning and service goals, service learning will fail to realize this potential. The power and the promise of service learning are too great to allow this imaginative …

The School Improvement Industry: A Case Study Of Framingham, Abigail Jurist Levy

New England Journal of Public Policy

This study looked at school improvement in the Framingham public schools from three perspectives. We were interested in finding out if the administration and school committee, local businesses with an interest in education, and agencies that provide training and technical assistance to schools have similar ideas regarding how the Framingham schools should improve. We conducted interviews with administrators and members of the school committee, local businesses and businesses involved in school/business partnerships, and six agencies that provide training and technical support to schools in the Greater Boston area. We found that although all groups shared many interests, the businesses and …

A Thoughtful Approach To Public Education Reform, John C. Rennie

New England Journal of Public Policy

This article restates the underlying rationale for the importance of high-quality K-12 public education. The author describes some of the difficulties reformers encounter in engendering support for and determining the most cogent elements of reform. The differences between the aims and capabilities of school-business partnerships, which essentially assist the current system, and systemic reform, which aims to change the system, led to the formation of the Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education. Rennie summarizes the process followed by MBAE in developing a framework for reform and meeting its objectives.

What's Wrong With Reform?, James H. Case

New England Journal of Public Policy

The conservative educational reform movement, which still, after more than a decade, is the dominant force in school reform, has had little success in improving schools because it is based on invalid and self-defeating theoretical assumptions. Taken together, these assumptions have the effect of substituting nostalgia — a longing for the schools the reformers themselves attended —for policy and for increasing standardization at the expense of individual growth and development. The reformers (Bloom, Hirsch, Ravitch, Finn, Bennett, et al.) have particular difficulty, given their assumptions, in dealing both with individual differences among students and with ethnic and racial differences among …

Follies: Education Reform And The Promise Of Technology, Nicholas Paleologos

New England Journal of Public Policy

This article offers an overview of forty years of American education and suggests why technology may save us from ourselves.

Naep State Reports In Mathematics: Valuable Information For Monitoring Education Reform, Ronald K. Hambleton, Sharon F. Cadman

New England Journal of Public Policy

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), a congressionally mandated program, can provide valuable data to educational policymakers in Massachusetts and other New England states about the status of their educational reform initiatives and their performance standards. The three purposes of this article are to describe NAEP and its goals and structure, to present some of the results of the 1992 Mathematics NAEP Assessment as an example of the utility of this national assessment program, and to highlight ways in which background data collected by NAEP can be helpful in interpreting assessment results and monitoring educational reform. The six New …

Local Autonomy, Educational Equity, And School Choice: Constitutional Criticism Of School Reform, James J. Hilton

New England Journal of Public Policy

Many critics of America's public education system hail parental or school choice, a program that allows public school systems to compete against one another and, under some proposals, against private educational institutions, for students and educational funding, as the answer to Americas educational crisis. Proponents argue that competition will force public schools to offer students a quality education or close. This article does not evaluate the claims of the parental-choice proposals; rather, it examines the difficulties inherent in funding such a system through traditional school finance mechanisms.

Affirmative Action Policy Today: Its Effectiveness As Examined In The United States Department Of Commerce, Louritha Green

Political Science Undergraduate Honors Theses

But freedom is not enough. You do not wipe away the scars of centuries by saying: Now you are free to go where you want, do as you desire, choose the leaders you please. you do not take a person who for years has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, "You are free to compete with all the others," and still justly believe you have been completely fair. (Graham, 182).

These words of President Lyndon Baines Johnson epitomize the foundation on which affirmative action programs were …

Yale Political Monthly 1994 May, The Politic, Inc.

The Politic

No abstract provided.

Technology Transfer: A View From The Trenches, Harvey Drucker

RISK: Health, Safety & Environment (1990-2002)

Dr. Drucker, who has lab-wide responsibility for technology transfer at Argonne National Laboratory, argues that transferring rights in discoveries made through tax supported research to private entities can contribute to public welfare in many ways.

Overview Of Federal Technology Transfer, Lawrence Rudolph

RISK: Health, Safety & Environment (1990-2002)

Mr. Rudolph reviews approximately thirteen years of legal and political developments that have contributed to laws governing the extent to which private firms may secure rights in technology at least partly developed with federal funds.

A Net Impact Study Of The Mtp Program: Briefing Guide For Presentation To Jobs Central, Kevin Hollenbeck

Presentations

No abstract provided.

Yale Political Monthly 1994 February, The Politic, Inc.

The Politic

No abstract provided.

The Future Of Communications Policymaking, Fred H. Cate

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

The National Information Infrastructure: Policymaking And Policymakers, Fred H. Cate

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.