The idea that one of the Catholic Church's most respected religious orders might run a public school sounded odd, maybe even, as Francis Cardinal George, head of the Archdiocese of Chicago, conjectured, illegal. But a decade ago several trends in American education, and in the Catholic Church, made a Catholic-operated public school seem…

The Indiana Choice Scholarship Program has the potential to be the largest school voucher program in the country. Though the authorizing legislation capped enrollment in the program at 7,500 for its first year (the 2011-12 school year), that cap was increased to 15,000 for this year, and will be removed for all subsequent years. With careful…

The author never worked "with" a boss before working with Ted at Brown University. She had always known of Ted--he was Dean at Harvard Graduate School of Education when she was a student there, just beginning her teaching career. Ted arrived at Brown University in September 1984. She was working at Brown in President Howard Swearer's…

This paper documents the initial process by which a San Diego middle school, located in a low-income and predominantly Hispanic neighborhood and repeatedly failing to meet No Child Left Behind provisions, restructured into an academically rigorous, detracked charter school. The discussion of the political experience and working relationships…

This article examines school leadership in the context of Taiwanese educational reform since the mid-1990s. The goal of the inquiry is twofold: to explore the conflicts that school administrators have confronted in facilitating school reform and to analyze the strategic and innovative leadership practices that have facilitated improvements in…

Provides an overview of research in educational implementation studies and presents guidelines on what works, and what does not, regardless of ideological bent toward educational change. (MMU)

Schools and districts invest a great deal of time and money in professional development for teachers through instructional coaching. With this effort comes the responsibility to design coaching programs that have the greatest potential to improve classroom instruction and, in turn, increase student learning. What research is available to help…

The purpose of this guidebook is to clarify why policymakers should expand the focus of school reform to encompass a reframing and restructuring of education support programs and services and to offer some guidance on how to go about doing so. Section 1 deals with the need to restructure support services and offers ideas for new directions.…

One way of garnering grant funding to support restructuring projects is to establish a districtwide grants development office. This article describes a low-cost grants office in the Norfolk (Virginia) Public Schools that employs one administrator and one part-time clerical support person. An overview of the grants development and proposal writing…

Project learning, with community and school staff assistance, helped a fifth-grade class transform the school lunchroom and their own behavior. A $2,500 Alcoa grant spearheaded an Italian restaurant project. Children served on five committees: public relations and advertising, management, art and design, planning and budgeting, and research. The…

Recommendations for implementing school-based management and shared decision making are presented in this educational policy bulletin. Based on a literature review and reported experiences of educational practitioners, four recommendations include: transformation of authority at district and school site levels; development of a systemwide…

This paper describes early outcomes of a Sacramento, California, elementary school that participated in the Accelerated Schools Project. The school, which serves many minority and poor students, began training for the project in 1992. Accelerated Schools were designed to advance the learning rate of students through a gifted and talented approach,…

Three phases of any change effort include initiation, implementation, and continuation. This seventh guidebook in a series of nine video conferences addresses later stages of implementation and continuation (initiation and early stages of implementation are discussed in the sixth guidebook.) In the guidebook are definitions of the three phases of…

Since 1988, considerable state and school/district energies have been devoted to implementing Re:Learning in Pennsylvania. This paper describes the experiences of Cycle I project directors who implemented Re:Learning in late 1988 or early 1989. Re:Learning is a national effort to redesign the total school system, based on Theodore Sizer's (1984)…

Critical milestones in the university facilitation of meaningful school reform in schools serving at-risk students--schoolwide assessment, cadre-based planning, and pilot testing of new strategies--are examined in this paper. A training and facilitation mechanism developed by the University of New Orleans' (UNO) Louisiana Accelerated Schools…