Three decades of reform aimed at improving disadvantaged student achievement have not substantially narrowed achievement and graduation gaps. This article reviews the research around eight essential components of effective high schools emerging from a review of the effective schools and high school reform literature, and provides a framework for…

Three decades of reform aimed at improving disadvantaged student achievement have not substantially narrowed achievement and graduation gaps. This article reviews the research around eight essential components of effective high schools emerging from a review of the effective schools and high school reform literature, and provides a framework for…

Market reforms in education are part of the educational policy landscape in many countries. Central to arguments for market reforms is the idea that competition and choice will spur changes in schools to be more innovative, which in turn will lead to better student outcomes. We define innovation in terms of a practice's relative prevalence in a…

Research on school effectiveness continues to indicate that those aspects of schooling that are closest to the student, namely teaching, instruction, and curriculum, have the greatest impact on student learning (see Gamoran, Nystrand, Berends, & LePore, (1995). Furthermore, the available evidence suggests that schools that cultivate particular…