This manual is designed to assist California school personnel to respond to the increasing diversity in student populations, with a change process based on principles of shared leadership through a decentralized site-based management method. The organization change model utilized by the pilot schools is the California Local Education Reform…

The Chicago School Reform Act provided a rare opportunity for those who were involved in the development of the legislation to be primarily responsible for the initial implementation of the plan. The governance model of the Reform Act, which is the subject of this study, provided for an elected school counsel at each of 542 schools and maintained…

In meeting its charge to investigate the role and impact of telecommunications technology on education and to make policy recommendations to the National Education Association (NEA), the NEA Special Committee on Telecommunications read and discussed numerous reports on educational applications of telecommunications and heard presentations from…

Three inter-related phenomena push the need for educational change and school improvement. These are the change from an agrarian to an industrial, and from an industrial to an information society; the changing demographics that see an increase in student racial and cultural diversity; and the need for new services for low income students. The…

An evaluation review was done of the training activities of the Creating a New Approach to Learning Project (Project CANAL) during the first half of Year 4 of the project. The review covered types of training opportunities that were available, observations on participation by members of the groups for whom the training was designed, some…

Three programs sponsored by the Seattle (Washington) public schools' Office of Academic Achievement were evaluated: the Academic Achievement Project, Early Childhood Model (ECM) Schools, and Pilot Projects. Academic Achievement projects were designed to increase the academic achievement of at-risk learners and to decrease disproportionality. The…

Researchers at the Center for Research on the Education of Students Placed at Risk (CRESPAR) have been studying the question of whether there are existing programs and practices that, if used nationwide, would actually improve the achievement of students placed at risk. The researchers' work and their studies of small-scale programs in many parts…

One of five articles on professional development schools in this theme issue. Discusses six developmental stages of collaboration--formation, conceptualization, development, implementation, evaluation, and termination/reformation--in the implementation of professional development schools at the University of South Carolina, Columbia, including…

Examines choices made by educators implementing cooperative learning today, expanding the pragmatic consideration of what works to an exploration of what we want for students from cooperative learning. Realizing the potential of cooperative learning requires examining the roles of teachers and the roles of schools in shaping society. (SLD)

Discusses ways schools must restructure to provide school-linked services. Education personnel must learn to work with other agencies and to expand the boundaries of their efforts. Practical implications of school-linked services are illustrated via reference to the New Beginnings program of the San Diego (California) city schools. (SLD)

This qualitative study of teachers'"sensemaking" about changing professional relationships and inclusive education involved interviews and observations of three teachers over the course of a school year. The teachers, one each from regular and special education and a "collaborating teacher," were employed in an urban upper elementary school in the…

The school improvement process of the Springfield (Massachusetts) Public School System is offered as a model for school reform. The efforts in Springfield began from the premise that institutions do not reform themselves, and that pressure from the outside, enough to be noticed, but not enough to disrupt, was necessary to spur reform. The work in…

This is the third report from the evaluation of the Multicultural Education Program in Pittsburgh (Pennsylvania), a major effort to address racial and ethnic diversity in a middle school. Section 1 of the report provides background on the multicultural education movement and the aims of the Pittsburgh program. Section 2 describes the status of the…

Describes a case study of 12 elementary schools (emphasizing 2 schools) affected by the Chicago School Reform Act, focusing on local contexts and features of school communities that advance or impede change. Results demonstrate the importance of neighborhood contexts and school leadership and the complexities of applying technical expertise. (SLD)

A male minority-group high school student and a teacher at Putnam High School in Springfield (Massachusetts) share experiences with community service learning (CSL) projects. A project facilitator describes the plans for implementing CSL throughout the city. (SLD)