For 3 years, the teachers, administrators, board of education members, and community representatives of San Diego, California, have been working on defining, developing, and implementing restructuring plans at approximately 50 schools. This paper documents and analyzes the development of a new middle school, O'Farrell Community School: Center for…

This report describes the Expeditionary Learning Outward Bound Project (ELOB), a 3-year project launched by Outward Bound USA in 1992 with a grant from the New American Schools Development Corporation. The major goal of the ELOB was to develop new schools or transform existing ones into centers of expeditionary learning, in which learning would…

This paper reports on a multiple case study of building administrators in a suburban school district in Oklahoma which implemented a unitary system of inclusion of students with disabilities in age-appropriate regular classrooms. The study focused particularly on how administrators developed shared meanings during the change process. Data were…

Examines school-based management as an effective strategy for optimizing the individual performance of teachers, students, and parents. Under school-based management, principals and teachers are given total responsibility for budgeting, selecting textbooks, scheduling, and hiring. This system provides flexibility in relationships with the broader…

For teachers engaged in the process of policy change, the way that they interpret policy and translate it into their daily practices will influence the implementation and the effects of a policy shift. Thus, it is important and necessary to examine educational decentralization policies from the local perspective, for the ways in which teachers…

This report describes what schools and educators across Kentucky are doing to implement school reform in performance assessment based on the Kentucky Education Reform Act of 1990 (KERA). It provides research-based suggestions about how implementation of programs can be enhanced and how the benefits of reform increased for the Kentucky youth.…

A formative evaluation was conducted of two elementary schools that have been engaged in the School/Community-Based Management (SCBM) process in Hawaii. The evaluation process was aligned with the SCBM philosophy, which promotes shared decision making, shared responsibility, and collaboration. Stakeholders contributed to the evaluation, which…

This digest provides a process for assuring that the unique needs of students who are gifted are addressed within the context of systemic educational reform. Several key elements guide the process: creating belief statements, clarifying the issues, and designing strategies for implementation. Generating belief statements based on what is believed…

This case study reports the feasibility of the Partnership Schools Comprehensive School Reform (CSR) model for school improvement in a Title I elementary school. Interviews were conducted and documents were collected for 3 years to study whether and how the school implemented key policy attributes--specificity, consistency, authority, power, and…

This paper details the structure and process of preservice teacher training and new teacher induction at Melrose Elementary School in Oakland (California), an urban professional development school associated with the California State University at Hayward. In addition to providing an overview of the school, describing the school-university…

The Chicago (Illinois) School Reform Act of 1988 set in motion a chain of reform efforts that have been the subject of considerable study. The plan emphasizes returning control of the schools to parents and the community through school-based management and local school councils. This book reports on studies of the implementation of the reform…

This guide is the fourth in a series of guidelines designed to be a framework for positive action at the school site and in the classroom through the High Schools That Work (HSTW) program, an effort to raise the achievement of career-bound students. It details the process of accomplishing the HSTW's goals through an ongoing staff development…

This book clarifies current efforts to reform teaching by providing a conceptual analysis of what a professional and a bureaucratic view of teaching entail. Case studies are presented illustrating what happens when differing approaches to teachers' work are tried in three school districts. The first chapter describes the two approaches to reform…

Drawing on the experience of public schools in Ann Arbor, Michigan, this document details a planning model and process of middle level reorganization. Following an examination of the impetus for change and how recent changes in the nation's economy, demographics, and family structure have shaped the context for educational change, collaborative…

In 1983 the Australian Commonwealth Government announced its new Participation and Equity Program (PEP). To allow schools to focus on new directions, substantial amounts of money were allocated to the states through the PEP so that they could develop programs that focus on nine major areas: (1) curriculum; (2) assessment, accreditation, and…