Purpose: The purpose of this essay is to honor, position and reflect on key themes related to high school reform within the careerlong scholarship of Karen Seashore Louis. It is presented in relation to my own and others' key studies and book-length arguments regarding educational change, knowledge utilization, professional communities and…

As recently as five years ago, educators politely listened to, and largely ignored, suggestions that the world is changing at a dramatic rate and that education must adapt. Today, many educators agree that the traditional Industrial Age model of learning no longer adequately prepares students for their futures. As a result, many schools, and…

This analysis of postupheaval educational change examines the extent to which massive changes in a school system's sociocultural environment lead to changes in the structure and practice of schooling. Framed broadly within systems theory and complexity theory, this examination of two cases of postupheaval educational change--post-1989 Czech…

Leading intellectual figures in the school reform movement, all of them favoring approaches centered around the value of competition and choice, outline different visions for the goal of choice-oriented educational reform and the best means for achieving it. This volume takes the reader inside the movement to empower parents with choice, airing…

This paper presents an array of structural configurations that invite new consideration of the necessary conditions for developing systemic school reform; first by reviewing the current literature, and then by examining thirty-six existing partnerships as structural configurations, an exploratory typology for the analysis of successful…

A system is a group of interacting, interrelated, and interdependent components that form a complex and unified whole. Systems thinking is a way of understanding reality that emphasizes the relationships among systems parts, rather than the parts themselves. Based on a field of study known as "system dynamics", systems thinking has a practical…

Former high school teacher, school leader, activist, consultant, and now professor of education James Nehring combines vivid case studies with practical suggestions to describe how the system works to thwart good schools and what educators can do to improve them. In this book he paints the big picture of school reform in the United States, deftly…

The authors of this monograph assert that by assisting school systems to more closely resemble "high reliability" organizations (HROs) that already exist in other industries and benchmarking against top-performing education systems from around the globe, America's school systems can transform themselves from compliance-driven…

School improvement might be initiated by state or district mandate, or it might be motivated by the concerns of school personnel. Teachers and administrators frequently enter the process with some idea of what needs to be reformed or improved, but issues can be overemphasized or overlooked if the process does not begin with a comprehensive needs…

The integration of art and instruction at the secondary level has not been promoted as a school reform as much as it might be. One reason for the lack of attention paid to the integration of arts and academics may be that the relationship between leadership traits and this interdisciplinary approach has not been defined. The purpose of this study…

The prevailing mental model of schooling is a series of linear events resulting in an educated individual. To make a school a learning organization requires systems thinking, interconnected team learning, and the collective intelligence of shared and personal vision. (SK)

After almost three decades of school reform, student achievement nationally is about where it was when it started, and student behavior has declined dramatically. Numbers of dropouts, especially in cities and among the poor and minorities, have gotten much higher. Yet many billions of dollars have been spent; countless professionals have carried…

The authors assert that the present educational system is not responding to the demands of the environment, but schools may be performing at their capacity and unable to improve further. They propose system redesign and implementation as part of an alternative frame of reference regarding reform. (Author)

Continuing use of outdated design is the main source of the crisis in education. The existing system should be "trans-formed" rather than "re-formed." Transformation requires the development of organizational capacity and collective capability to engage in systems design with a broad vision of what should be. (Author/JOW)

Examines the emergence of "third wave" school restructuring from the fields of educational technology, instructional design, and systems theory. Argues that its core principles--social functionalism, efficiency and productivity, individualism, and expertism--will likely reinforce existing practices instead of substantively transforming…