This research brief is Part I of a four-part series that studies the implementation and impact of the Houston Independent School District (HISD) decision to decentralize in the 1990s. This first part describes how decentralization was enacted in HISD. It examines the implementation of decentralization at HISD. The process that HISD originally…

The federal School Improvement Grants (SIG) program, to which $3 billion were allocated under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA), supports schools attempting to turn around a history of low performance. School turnaround also is a focus of Race to the Top (RTT), another ARRA-supported initiative, which involved a roughly $4…

High-performing, at-risk schools are not all equal in the challenges they face and the resources available. This study extends the research on at-risk schools by expanding the definition of at-risk to include risk factors beyond poverty. In addition, the study explicitly examines possible differences between district and school-level factors.…

The School District of Philadelphia (SDP), like many other urban school districts, struggles to increase its hiring and retention of experienced and highly qualified teachers in its low-performing/high-need schools. Toward the goal of improving teacher quality and the experience balance, particularly in hard-to-staff schools, the Philadelphia…

This paper describes the processes and outcomes experienced by the Marshalltown Community School District (Iowa) as it implemented a shared decision-making, school-improvement program. A district Shared Decision Making (SDM) Team and School Improvement Program (SIP) teams were trained to facilitate greater staff participation in the…

Successful development and implementation of outcome-based education requires long-range planning and ongoing commitment from all planning partners. District-level planning is essential. A well-designed strategic plan embraces OBE philosophies, premises, and principles and should consist of a district philosophy, vision, and mission and a set of…

The study examines relationships among variations in the implementation of participative decision making, instructional improvement, and student learning in 1 school district of about 3,300 students over 5 years. Findings support the conclusion that teacher participation in decision making is related to instructional improvement and better student…

As part of an ongoing effort to monitor the desegregation implementation of the Chicago (Illinois) Public Schools, a study was done to evaluate the participation of Core Planning Teams (CPTs) in 28 Phase II schools in the CANAL training project at the beginning of the third year of Project CANAL in the fall of 1990. Project CANAL provided five…

This report presents the findings and recommendations of an examination of the implementation of a major form of school-based management (SBM). It is based on case studies of the science and mathematics departments of 10 high schools and 9 middle or junior high schools in 12 school systems, almost all of which are urban school districts. The study…

A study was done of the degree to which a program of comprehensive training in shared decision-making was implemented in Chicago (Illinois) Public Schools. Focus was on reliably measuring the implementation of shared decision-making processes and principles and identifying factors that might promote the adoption of this model at the local level.…

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 report analyzes turnover among members on core planning teams (CPTs) in the 41 Phase I Chicago (Illinois) public schools participating in the Project CANAL model for school-based management. The analysis covers two periods of time: Year 1 to the beginning of Year 3, and Year 2 to the beginning of Year 3. Overall, substantial turnover was…

Four school boards in Ontario, Canada, were selected for intensive case studies to examine the models, policies, procedures, and practices used to stimulate, support, coordinate, and assess the effectiveness of curriculum changes within their jurisdictions. The data collection consisted of (1) documents such as organizational charts,…