The regents action plan: New York's educational reform initiative in the 1980s

Abstract

Major educational reform reached New York State in the 1980s as it did in many of the other 49 states. In March 1984, the State Board of Regents, New York's education policy making body, gave its unanimous approval to the Regents Action Plan to Improve Elementary and Secondary Education Results in New York, hereafter referred to as the Action Plan, (New York State Board, 1984). In the following November the Regents approved the so-called Part 100 Commissioner's Regulations, which transformed the Action Plan's descriptive prose into appropriate regulatory language. The first of the Part 100 Regulations were phased in at the beginning of fall term 1985; the remainder were scheduled to go into effect over the next several years. While there have already been alterations (mainly delays) in the Action Plan's timetable, and a few schools have been granted variances from some of the Plan's mandates, the principal components of the Action Plan remain intact. The Action Plan remains the most enduring accomplishment of the Regents' 200th anniversary year. Many of the Action Plan's specific mandates had their counterparts in at least some of the reform packages enacted by various other states, yet the comprehensiveness of New York's reforms is impressive. Most remarkably, New York's popular governor and its state legislators played only minimal roles in the shaping of New York's educational reforms. Many of New York's politicians later spoke approvingly of the Action Plan and the Board of Regents' efforts to tighten educational requirements, but concrete evidence of the state's political leadership is hard to find. Both its substantive provisions as well as the process of gaining