In just the last ten years, goaded by broad and still unsettled cultural shifts, education practices have changed dramatically. Schools are no longer just recording and analyzing inputs--dollars spent, number of days of instruction, numbers of students per teacher--but pushing their data-gathering and analysis efforts into the brave new world of…

In this article, the authors explore whether educational systems have the institutional capacity to implement comprehensive, systemic reform, as envisioned in legislation such as No Child Left Behind. Drawing upon evidence from various state-level reform initiatives, the authors highlight the ways in which systemic reform appears to positively…

This report pays tribute to the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Rural Systemic Initiatives (RSIs), an investment of more than $140 million to improve mathematics and science education in some of rural America's most impoverished communities. The report illustrates the impact of NSF's RSI program on a national scale. Each RSI planned a project…

This theme issue includes four articles on high performance by poor Texas schools. In "Principal of National Blue Ribbon School Says High Poverty Schools Can Excel" (interview with Robert Zarate by Christie L. Goodman), the principal of Mary Hull Elementary School (San Antonio, Texas) describes how the high-poverty, high-minority school…

This report summarizes results from the 1999-2000 evaluation of the Austin Collaborative for Mathematics Education in AISD.

This report summarizes evaluation results from AISD's Austin Collaborative for Mathematics Education (ACME) and campus support initiative during school year 2000-2001.

The Texas legislature and the State Board of Education, recognizing the need for an alternative to student retention, established the Retention Reduction Pilot Program to provide additional days of instruction for students in first grade who would otherwise have been retained. The Optional Extended Year Program (OEYP) was initiated to expand…