The Maine Department of Education (MDOE) is at the forefront of national efforts to align high school curriculum to college and career readiness standards. Embarking on a mission it calls A Personal Journey for Next Generation Learners, Maine has employed several key strategies to ensure all of its students graduate from high school with the…

During the 2007-08 school year, the New York City Department of Education launched the second phase of its ambitious and innovative initiative known as "Children First." Ultimately, this initiative aims to intensify the focus by all educators on student performance and in doing so to stimulate the development of evidence-based cultures…

Change is easier to demand than to endure. The deeper we go into reform, the rougher it gets and the higher the degree of public impatience and frustration. The higher the frustration, the greater the temptation for policy makers to try the quick fix. Inadequate funding is another reality faced by "ideal" reform plans. At least 30 states…

Concerned with how new schooling structures, once implemented, will remain in place, this paper reviews findings of the International School Improvement Project (ISIP) about institutionalization and suggests their application to educational restructuring results. According to the ISIP study, indicators of complete institutionalization include…

During the 1987-88 school year, the notion of school-based management (SBM) was introduced in selected schools in the Dade County (Florida) Public Schools. The paper discusses the changes that are occurring in the shared decision-making (SDM) body of the SBM project over time. In June 1989, schools participating in the SBM program completed a form…

In 1987, the Ohio Department of Education enacted a new policy requiring all school districts to plan and implement programs designed to provide support to newly hired professional educators. The mandate's intent was to ensure that inexperienced teachers, counselors, social workers, psychologists, supervisors, or administrators hired to work in…

The booklet focuses on methods for institutionalizing innovative special education or other educational programs and was developed by the 1980 meeting of the Invisible College on the Institution of Change. An introductory section briefly considers the legal mandate of Public Law 94-142 (the Education for All Handicapped Children Act) to supply all…

Several ways are examined in which clinicians can choose to be involved in social policy as extensions of their clinical practice roles. Key concepts of operationalizing, implementing, and promoting change are stressed. (Author/MH)

A four-step process is outlined for colleges to use in removing planning constraints, the difficulties that decrease or hinder the effective implementation of institutional change strategies. Its use on multiple complex constraints and in coping with chaos is discussed. (MSE)

This article considers a training and development case study involving external advisors as training consultants in the development of a new management structure in a British mental handicap unit. The study provides a number of perspectives on the role of training and development consultants in helping "planning for change" activities.…

Offers educational practitioners direction for the development of a master plan for the implementation and application of computer-based educational technology by briefly examining computers in education, discussing organizational change from a theoretical perspective, and presenting an overview of the planning strategy known as the planning and…

This article offers some strategies for closing the linkage between initial needs assessment and the implementation of change. Examined are: prioritizing needs through criteria analysis, developing a cyclical implementation/staff inservice plan, and utilizing an analytical problem solving approach to curriculum and decision making. (Author/RAO)

Provides 10 guidelines to follow in implementing a competency-based curriculum. The guidelines include not imposing the program from above, matching measurement devices to instructional goals, stimulating student support of the program, and allowing for easy adjustment of competency measures. (IRT)

Examines data from four secondary schools struggling to develop and implement authentic learning and assessment over a three-year period. The schools did not succeed due to several interrelated factors: lack of foundational knowledge, the dominance of privacy and classroom autonomy norms, teacher time and student control issues, efficacy issues,…

Good work by "outsiders" requires more than the right attitude concerning school complexities on the inside. Outside change agents can use seven strategies: acknowledging values, problem-setting, short-circuiting the system, one-legged conferencing, text-making, curriculum-making, and observing with feedback. Includes 24 references. (MLH)