Superintendents and school boards must balance state and federal mandates, requirements of new legislation, and policy changes as they search for best practices in education that will result in increased student achievement. Pressure has increased, with an emphasis on high stakes testing and accountability since the implementation of the No Child…

Purpose: The past decade has seen considerable debate about how to best evaluate the efficacy of educational improvement initiatives, and members of the educational leadership research community have entered the debate with great energy. Throughout this debate, the use of randomized experiments has been a particularly contentious subject. This…

Includes descriptions of 16 of the participating schools written by administrators of those schools. (IRT)

Described in this study is a two-year experimental program in teacher education which provided 14 student teachers with opportunity to experiment with the process of schooling and to learn from it. As a result, six community-based vacation schools were created. Specific sections of the book deal with: (1) the challenge of the times (late sixties)…

Dramatic changes in school calendars create the need for compensating changes in routines of family and community life. For schools undertaking year-round programs the extent to which families and communities are willing and able to make necessary adjustments certainly bears on the educational programs. Therefore well conceived efforts to evaluate…

The first year of a new program, in which students were expected to take responsibility for their own education, is evaluated in this report. Study was almost entirely independent; students usually worked at their own rate and used the teacher as a resource person. Parental and community involvement was emphasized. Volunteers worked at the school,…

The second year (1972-1973) of a three-year evaluation of University Hill Secondary School, three areas of the program were examined: a survey was made of the use of community resources; a study of the adaptability of Grade Eight students to the individualized program; the performance of students on alternative forms of the same standardized test…

Summative and formative evaluation of the Berkeley Experimental Schools Project (BESP) are summarized in this two-volume document. In Volume I, the evaluators answer the specific evaluative questions posed by the National Institute of Education, the primary funding agency for the alternative schools project. Out of an initial 23 alternative…

Purpose of the Experimental Schools Project in New Hampshire School Supervisory Union 58 was to effect change within an existing school system, create new instructional programs to affect student awareness and knowledge, relate school to community and the instructional process to total life-space environment, and document variables affecting…

The purpose of this evaluation is to describe and assess the political, social, economic, and educational outcomes of the voucher demonstration, and the implications of these outcomes for public policy issues. The basic hypotheses of the Demonstration, the basic public policy issues, the major evaluation questions to be considered are set forth,…

Seeking an understanding of rural communities in order to gain insights into opportunities for improving rural schools, this 2-year project examined 14 case studies and presented implications for future use. Selected as exemplary of particular strategies and representative of diverse populations of rural America, the case studies were examined…

New Zealand's Hutt Valley Outpost experimental teacher training model was established in 1969 on a local high school campus following problems recruiting and training secondary teachers. By offering local training, researchers found students sought local positions. Similar programs began in other districts. The model has endured and evolved. (SM)

The Minneapolis Experimental Schools Project (Southeast Alternatives)--a five-year program established in 1971 to test comprehensive change in education--enrolls 2,200 K-12 students, approximately 4% of the public school population. Southeast Alternatives (SEA) is dedicated to four major goals: (1) to provide a curriculum which helps children…

This Bulletin is about sweeping changes that were put into effect at Roosevelt Junior High School in Eugene. It outlines some of the philosophy and ideas which generated these changes, explains how the new program was initiated, traces the development of the program through its first 3-year experimental period, and presents some major points…