Can four-day school weeks help districts save money? How do districts overcome the barriers of moving to a four-day week? What is the effect of a four-day week on students, staff and the community? This paper enumerates the benefits for students and teachers of four-day school weeks. Recommendations for implementation of a four-day week are also…

Explores whether primary schoolchildren's success in reading and writing depends on managing of literacy teaching at different levels, not simply the underlying pedagogic principles. Communication breakdowns in England's Catch Up Project illustrate how increasingly complex variables become in a top-down approach. (Contains 38 references.) (MLH)

Explored the implementation of middle level reform components in both high- and low-performing middle schools, seeking to identify factors linked to student achievement. Found that organizational health, which includes academic focus, teacher affiliation, and resource support, more directly influences student performance than simple implementation…

Neither hyperrationalist nor decentralist reform strategies will seriously improve educational quality. Successful reform strategies incorporate three dimensions: the authorized movement, regional or localist responses, and conversation, involving changes in school rhetoric. States must create a context for developing organizational competence at…

New American Schools (NAS) was formed in 1991 to create and develop whole-school designs that would be adopted by schools throughout the country in order to improve student performance. This book is a retrospective on NAS and draws together the finding from RAND research. Chapter 1, the introduction, gives an overview of NAS, RAND's purpose and…

Like most other reform endeavors, the current restructuring movement may fail. Advocates often oversimplify restructuring, overlooking serious underlying issues, such as the politics of organizational change, and ingrained U.S. schooling characteristics, including inclusiveness, deep structure, knowledge industry influences, growth of state power,…

Project SHAPE is a two-year intervention and enrichment program for underachieving and educationally disadvantaged ninth and tenth grade students in Toledo, Ohio. Operating through teacher empowerment; curriculum development; structural organization; and student, parent, and community involvement, SHAPE's goals are developing an academically…

In the late 1980s, radical administrative changes (setting up boards of trustees and relaxing zoning restrictions) were undertaken in New Zealand's education system to make schools more responsive to their communities. This paper describes the consequences of implementing these policies, using evidence from a study of a particular high school.…

Research has indicated that educators view class size as a factor in improving student learning. This publication summarizes findings about some recently implemented class-size initiatives. It highlights results from Tennessee's reduced class-size experiment of the 1980s; summarizes the efforts and results from other recent state-level initiatives…

Analyzes current and future directions of educational change in Quebec, highlighting major policy themes: governance and organization, teaching and learning, and human and financial resources. The necessary conditions for achieving intended reform goals may be lacking. Schools lack the capacity to engage in self-development without external…

Mastery learning is both a philosophy about student learning and a set of instructional implementation techniques. This volume presents 10 case studies of instructional programs identified as mastery learning or outcome-based education. The programs are organized according to whole-class mastery, flexible grouping, flexible grouping/continuous…

Most of the middle schools in Belgium are 2-year schools that form a link between the 6 years of elementary education and the last 4 years of secondary education. In Flanders they are regarded as an example of the more global reform of the secondary educational system in a comprehensive sense. First, this document outlines the new system of…

This interim report evaluates the implementation of the "House Plan," a plan to create small personalized schools within the 110 large comprehensive high schools in New York (New York) by subdividing all ninth grades into separate units. This evaluation covers only the 37 "dropout prevention" high schools which had been…

This paper presents organizational strategies and implementation methods for conversion to middle school organization (scheduled to take place in 1988) in the Johnson City, Tennessee, school system. Carried out by the district in partnership with local institutions of higher education, the study focuses on what is educationally best for the child…

Examines how educators have overcome obstacles to school improvement and implemented recommendations in "Breaking Ranks" governing technology, personalization, and organization and time. Implementation often falters due to large enrollments, time factors, school goals, and traditional views of teacher roles, responsibilities, and…