Challenges Wilbur Brookover's response to the author's article "It's Time We Changed the Effective Schools Formula" appearing in the November 1987 issue of "Kappan." The author's Pennsylvania studies show that certain variables such as classroom climate, emphasis on basic skills, and time-on-task were inconsequential in predicting a school's…

The French government has announced new moves designed to reinforce the teaching of basic skills in this nation's elementary schools. Highlights of these moves and of Jean-Pierre Chevenement's (minister of national education) recommendations on what should be emphasized in schools are presented. (JN)

In 1990 two Baltimore, Maryland, schools began an educational experiment. The Barclay School, a public elementary and middle school, won permission to bypass the city's curriculum and adopt the program of the Calvert School, a private elementary school. Test scores and writing skills of Barclay students have improved using the back-to-basics,…

An ongoing study has found that the "basics" in contemporary educational theory are actually the smallest, most easily isolated and most easily testable fragments of knowledge in a discipline--abstractions produced by complex analysis. The project is exploring an alternative version of "basicness" in which the complex, often ambiguous realm of a…

After Deer Valley School District (Arizona) adopted a whole-language, discovery-based curriculum, parents who believed in a traditional "basics" curriculum established Valley Academy, a charter K-9 school serving 455 students. After struggling through administrative and financial problems, bad publicity, and interpersonal conflict, the principal…

A charter school in Kenai, Alaska, offers back-to-basics curriculum and direct instruction. The school has drawn many home-schoolers back to the public school system, and consistently scores high on standardized tests. The school's success is attributed to teachers' collaboration and common vision, continuity across grades, high academic…

Kensington School is an elementary school in Milford (Missouri) School District built in 1966 with open classrooms and designed for team teaching and other innovative practices. A visit 15 years later reveals that the physical plant has deteriorated somewhat, most classrooms are walled off from each other, and innovative structures are not now…

Offers a fictionalized account of the development, within an elementary school, of four distinctive schools-within-schools. Questions and issues arising in developing such programs are discussed; the theme of each of these four is described, and advantages that staff find in the arrangement are presented. (Author/JB)

Addresses issues related to the mortality of elementary science programs, considering role of curriculum planners, teachers, and building principals. Gives examples of factors responsible (in the form of a "10 most wanted poster") with at least one countermeasure for each. (JM)