A House Divided: Community Politics and Education Reform in Detroit

This research investigates the inherent dilemma evident in attempts to promote decentralization initiatives in urban public schools. Detroit provides a natural experiment in decentralized education reform given both the collaborative and the competitive reform efforts that were advanced between 1988 and 1994. A collaborative partnership, the Detroit Compact, was created, and schools of empowerment and choice were partially implemented, conceptually designed to enlarge the community role in the operation of the schools. Results indicate that efforts at promoting decentralization, over time may produce counterpressures to recentralize decision making.     

Rehabilitation and Prevention of Coronary Heart Disease: An Overview of the Type A Behavior Pattern

In recent years, physical education has provided the impetus for an increasing number of subspecialties. Among one of the more prominent health-related developments has been the growth of cardiac rehabilitation programs. The complexity of cardiovascular disease necessitates that exercise specialists are cognizant of both the psychological and physiological dilemma of the paticnt. Therefore, this paper provides an integrative review of literature perianing to the coronary-prone behavior pattern (type A). It presents a discussion of the behavioral predispositions associated with this action-emotion complex together with the physiological consequences and concomitant eardiovaseular risk observed in individuals identified as type A. Finally, a social learning framework is offered as an aid to the practitioner in understanding and influencing the modification of such behavior.     

A New Approach to Comparing Several Equating Methods in the Context of the NEAT Design

The nonequivalent groups with anchor test (NEAT) design involves missing data that are missing by design. Three equating methods that can be used with a NEAT design are the frequency estimation equipercentile equating method, the chain equipercentile equating method, and the item-response-theory observed-score-equating method. We suggest an approach to perform a fair comparison of the three methods. The approach is then applied to compare the three equating methods using three data sets from operational tests. For each data set, we examine how the three equating methods perform when the missing data satisfy the assumptions made by only one of these equating methods. The chain equipercentile equating method is somewhat more satisfactory overall than the other methods.