The Memphis Restructuring Initiative (MRI) was an attempt at comprehensive school reform in Tennessee that ended with a whimper. Its downfall seems to involve some sort of "schismogenesis" or "inversion," in which many teachers violently reacted against being overworked and overwhelmed, culminating in the easy discarding of 8…

This monograph reviews the literature pertaining to inservice education and summarizes its contents relating to several broad themes: planning and instructional concerns in inservice education, problems relating to administration and coordination of inservice programs, and elements common to successful programs. The literature of inservice…

A study of the implementation of Chapter 2 of the Education Consolidation and Improvement Act in Tennessee revealed that administrative burdens have been reduced, distributive rather than redistributive purposes have been served, availability of resources for private schools has increased, and responsible, program-oriented local control has been…

A two-part survey prepared in compliance with the Stewart B. McKinney Homeless Assistance Act assessed the extent of homelessness among Missouri children and the types of educational barriers that they confront. The survey formed the basis for the federally required State Plan for educating homeless children. In this document, an explanation of…

The general decline in public resources has encouraged government agencies to consolidate job functions, and the internal program evaluator is becoming a scarce commodity. This paper briefly describes a case study about the circumstances and implications of merging two formally antagonistic job roles: program administrator and program evaluator.…

This paper summarizes some of the main conclusions of the Study of Dissemination Efforts Supporting School Improvement, specifically those regarding the process of innovation implementation. The focus is on the contributions of potential assisters to various implementation outcomes, from which implications for policy and practice are derived. The…

To contribute to knowledge of how limited resources affect education agencies' ability to maintain and improve educational quality, this paper examines the services California's county education offices must provide. Specifically, it identifies state-mandated functions of county education offices and analyzes how Santa Clara County is meeting…

This paper focuses on local (school district level) facilitators, or individuals with major responsibility for implementing federal or state-sponsored school improvement practices. It covers who they are, what roles they play, and how they contribute to various outcomes. The sample is from the Study of Dissemination Efforts Supporting School…

The MD Program is a collaborative, interorganizational, school-based administrator training program at the doctoral level, sponsored by five county school systems in the Baltimore metropolitan area and two campuses of the University of Maryland. After an introductory description of the program and its collaborative decision-making policy, this…

The practice profile is a standardized, systematic, cost-effective tool for summarizing the components and requirements of a program in a manner that permits comparison with other programs or selection of discrete components from various programs. It provides a component checklist, a precise list of implementation requirements, and a system for…

An increased proportion of Chapter 1 budgets across the country have been directed to the purchase of microcomputer hardware and software. A major reason for this expenditure has been the promise of better instruction, or at least more instruction for Chapter 1 students, without additional staff resources. Although evidence for instructional…

This report discusses the structural conditions under which organizational development (OD), as employed in the school systems of the United States and Canada, is more or less applicable to schools. The first section (chapters 1-6) reviews papers and books, concerning either OD in general or the ways in which the ideas of OD have been used in the…

In 1984 the Education Department (ED) began to monitor state education agencies' (SEA) administration of the education block grant known as "Chapter 2." ED staff visited 21 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico and found many serious problems among the SEAs and local education agencies (LEAs). The problems are divided into…

Examines both benefits and problems associated with collaborative projects, based on experiences of the University of Southern Indiana and 15 school corporations in the state to improve public school mathematics and science instruction. While the partnerships had many positive outcomes, the burden of preparing proposals and implementing projects…

A case study approach was used to evaluate the statewide reading improvement project in Louisiana called Special Plan Upgrading Reading (SPUR). SPUR emphasized a change agent approach by providing Technical Assistants and small stipends (approximately $5,000) to participating school districts. During the first two years of the evaluation,…