Who Legally Governs Public Education?

National Association of State Boards of Education
The web site for this organization offers research and news on educational issues, as well as links to all the state departments of education.

Council of Chief State School Officers
This organization is composed of public officials who lead departments responsible for education in U.S. states. The CCSSO web site also provides you with information about the Interstate New Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium (INTASC).

Education Commission of the States
The Education Commission of the States (ECS) is an interstate compact created in 1965 to improve public education by facilitating exchanges between state education leaders and policy makers.

Power Play: The New State Role in Schools
In 2000, the weekly online newspaper Education Week ran this series of articles on the expanding role of states in administering schools.

National Association of School Boards
This is the organization for members of local school boards.

American Association of School Administrators
This professional organization for principals and other school administrators has 14,000 members from all over the country.

National Association of Elementary School Principals
This organization for elementary and middle school principals offers publications, news highlights, and more.

National Association of Secondary School Principals
This is "the organization for principals, assistant principals and aspiring principals" of middle and high schools.

Who Influences American Public Education?

National Education Association
Visit the web site of the country’s largest teacher organization to learn more about what it does.

American Federation of Teachers
Explore the programs and activities of one of the two major teacher organizations in the country.

Education Week Hot Topics
The weekly publication, Education Week, has created several articles on "hot topics," that relate to this section of this chapter, including Parent Involvement, Community Partnerships, and Privatization of Public Education. They all contain summaries of the issue, with several links to further resources about the topics.

PTA
Here is the web site of the national Parent Teacher Association. Find a chapter near you.

Family and Community
The multimedia articles in the "Pathways to Improvement" series from the North Central Regional Educational Laboratories include articles on business partnerships and working with parents.

Commercialism in Education Research Unit
This research group based at the Arizona State University published an annual report on Trends in Schoolhouse Commercialism.

Private Companies that Manage Public Schools:

Edison Schools


The TesseracT Group


Sylvan Learning, Inc.


U.S. Department of Education
If you have not yet visited the Department of Education’s web site, you may wish to do so for a glance at the scope of the federal government’s involvement with education.

Regional Educational Laboratories
The Department of Education’s Office of Educational Research and Improvement sponsors ten Regional Educational Laboratories, each providing research and technical assistance to educators in a different geographical area of the country. In addition, each lab focuses on research in an area of national importance.

Federal Resources for Educational Excellence (FREE)
This site makes available to the public teaching and learning resources from over thirty departments of the federal government.

How Are Schools Financed?

School Finance
This is a "hot topic" article from the weekly online publication Education Week. It summarizes current issues in school financing and offers links to several related news articles.

The Condition of Education and Digest of Educational Statistics
These two annual publications from the Department of Education’s National Center for Educational Statistics provide a great deal of information about the finances of U.S. public schools.

Rankings and Estimates
Updates are posted at the NEA’s web site twice a year to this annual report from the National Education Association on school spending and other statistics.

CPRE School Finance Project
The Consortium for Policy Research in Education has undertaken a massive research project on school financing. You can find out about the ongoing project and some of its results at this site.

No Child Left Behind
Visit the Department Education’s No Child Left Behind web site to get the latest details on this new federal initiative.

Head Start
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services maintains the Head Start web site. You can search for specific Head Start programs, learn more about Early Head Start, or link to resources and publications.

Successful Schools
STAR Center at the University of Texas-Austin provides details on several Texas schools that have been named as Title 1 Distinguished Schools.

Success for All
This is the official web site of the Success for All Foundation.

Alt SFA
The site of this organization opposed to Success for All promises "independent research and opinions" about the popular program.