Districts are struggling to accelerate students' learning, support their health and wellness, and close the achievement gap. Labeled "worst" in 1987, by 2017 Chicago Public Schools was among the nation's most improved school systems. Chicago's story embeds many lessons about system change. Sharon Greenberg and Anthony S. Bryk illustrate…

In this article, the author makes a distinction between two kinds of change: tinkering change and systemic change. Tinkering change includes reforms intended to address a specific deficiency or practice. Such tinkering change can be contrasted to what Shakespeare termed "sea change" in "The Tempest" ("a sea change into something rich and strange")…

After-school learning, summer learning, and family involvement in learning are major predictors of children's development, educational achievement, and school success. The United States will not achieve its national goals of equal educational opportunity without addressing the importance of and inequities in out-of-school learning opportunities.…

After almost three decades of school reform, student achievement nationally is about where it was when it started, and student behavior has declined dramatically. Numbers of dropouts, especially in cities and among the poor and minorities, have gotten much higher. Yet many billions of dollars have been spent; countless professionals have carried…

Summarizes leading scholars' findings in leadership theory, local politics and government, state and national school politics, and change theory. Integrating this knowledge into a systematic reform effort requires superintendents with integrity and vision; political stability; good board/superintendent relations; long-term, statewide commitment;…

Education is the only "business" in which the consumers (students) rather than the workers (teachers and administrators) do most of the work. For educational technology to fulfill its potential, we must change our views about work in schools. Technology must be used for the workers to improve connections and by the workers to enhance and extend…

A Chicago inner-city high school that attempted "top-down" innovations without true teacher participation finds that little has changed, according to a teacher who has been case historian. (Author)

Regarding educational improvement as a continuing process based upon research, feedback, and modification, the effective utilization of educational research in the comprehensive ES'70 program is described as dependent upon the extent to which an effective network of interagency and interpersonal communications is developed. (JK)

In Louisville, Kentucky, urban education problems were met through numerous organizational, financial, curricular, and personnel changes and retraining. The belief that people support what they help create and that people affected by change must be allowed participation in planning change insured the finding of satisfactory solutions. (Author/JN)

Overload and fragmentation combine to reduce educators' motivation for working on reform. Since educational change is essentially nonlinear, existing school cultures and structures are antithetically opposed to systemic reform activities, including networking. The lesson of systemic reform is to adopt strategies that mobilize large numbers of…